Overview Of Health Care And Education Reconciliation Act Of 2010: An Essay.

Introduction

1. Policythat is the focus of your evaluation. Include in your summary the purpose of the policy, its scope and main points, its stakeholders and constituents, and its relation to other policies (if applicable).
2. Explain the development of the policy, considering policymakers and their political standing, timelines, and budget restrictions.
3. Explain your rationale for choosing the policy, using your research as support for your choice.

Evaluation

1. Determine the policy’s strengths and weaknessesin its ability to provide positive and/or negative change for its target population. Support your response with examples.
2. Assess the extent to which the policy meets the needsof its target population, using data to support your claims.
3. Explain any unintended impactsas a result of the policy. Consider populations, economics, and social or cultural factors in your response.

Provisions for Health Care

With the view to creating provisions for affordable treatment to all sections of the American society, and also extend the entitlement of affordability to the students in helping them out with loans as a form of assistance to let them continue with their studies. This is the basic purpose and the scope for the enactment of the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 by the Obama Government (Albright et al. 2011).

For the health care facilities, the act provides for; reduction in tax credits; increase in the amount of grant to persons belonging to low income group and without having any insurance coverage; provides for establishment of health care facility centers so that the incidence of fraudulent and exploitative practices could be curbed; and, makes special provisions for persons with special economic needs with regard to the grants of monetary assistance (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, 2011).

With regard to the provisions meant for students, the act provides for, facilities that shall provide students with loans directly without going through the federal procedures; effecting an increase in the Pell Grant in order to ensure that the expenses of the students are in tandem with the cost of the commodities prevailing in the market scenario; provisions for making huge grants aimed at the benefit of the students and the academic sphere in general; arranging for provisions that shall be pardoning the recovery of loan to students judging upon their financial situations and capabilities under the Income- Based Repayment initiative; making investments in the schools and colleges which have a historical recognition and also those which are under the administration of minority communities; and for strengthening the College Access Challenge Grant program, which aims at funding the states institutions and also for the sake of increasing financial literacy along with retaining the students (Albright et al. 2011).

There are quite a lot of stakeholders in this particular act, and they include health workers; the hospitals and clinics offering treatment to the people; the patients; the educational institutions; the students; and the administrators who are at the helm of affairs. To be very specific about the stakeholders on the basis of narrowing it down for the specific purpose, they are, the ones to provide the insurances, the hospital authorities, and the healthcare workers. The Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, is originally an amended act. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was passed on the 23^rd of March in the year 2010, and after a few months, several amendments had to be made in the Act and finally the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 was passed, incorporating several provisions that was missing in the previous Act. That is how the policy developed into its present form (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, 2013).

The rationale of the research lies in the fact that the policy or the legal statute has been amended and made to come into being for the sake of helping out the economically underprivileged section of the American society specifically, and in general to ensure that the population of America can get some support to bear with pressure of the rising cost.

Provisions for Students

With regard to the strengths of the policy, that is very much implicit in the provisions of the policy itself. It tends to cater to the requirements of the students who struggle to balance their expenses and their educational career. It also has provisions for providing treatment to all sections of the society irrespective of their financial status, which is indeed a very much needed provision as it acknowledges that financial crisis can grip any person within its hold, whether rich or poor. The decision has been very consciously taken to ensure that the benefits of the legislation is evenly distributed to all sections of the society. The system of purchasing insurance policy for securitizing the life chances against any unprecedented harm is something which is very common in America. It has to be renewed at regular intervals making sure that there is no scope left by the citizens to fall under even the shortest period of being uninsured. The privilege of buying insurance is something which the sole prerogative of the moneyed people and the not ones who are not as affluent. This policy is however a relief for them those who are not insured in any way. By ensuring provisions for affordable health care to the people it has also ensured that the employment and business opportunities expand and people get opportunities to earn their livelihood in the state of faltering economy that has hit the country hard. With the expansion of health care extending facilities in the country it has become possible for the government to ensure that no individual is unduly made to shell out huge amount of money for the sake of treatment. It has also made duping patients by the doctors extremely difficult as the health centres are highly monitored to ensure that the quality of service provided is satisfactory and at the same time reasonable in terms of the money (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, 2011).

Having talked of the advantages of the policy, the discussion shall now be devoted to the disadvantages of it. The new policy which has launched affordable insurance and healthcare plans for the masses has caused losses for many companies in an unprecedented manner, all of a sudden. People had switched over to the new plan immediately. The insurance policies of many persons availing the system that prevailed previously had to be cancelled, which had caused those individuals a lot of financial loss. Hence it is clear that though the old policy did not support the new health and education related provisions, it became redundant. Even compensation given to the persons who faced the loss was very much meagre or in some cases not at all compensated. Though the Obamacare, the other name for the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 seemed affordable but that was supposed to be for the long term purposes, with the initial cost being extremely high and in some cases out of the level of affordability of the common people. Any emancipative policy cannot come into being without making people pay for it, since the government functions on the basis of the money it gets by taxing the people. Naturally this means that the level of taxes in the country had gone up higher than ever. It was just illusory that the government was helping the people out in some special way, as the people ended up paying for the privileges they were entitled to, from their own pockets (Hansen et al. 2011). For these reasons the Obamacare had been termed as unconstitutional and a hijacking of the healthcare policies of the country.

Having reached at the concluding section, it can be said that the policy was designed to benefit all sections of the society, but it had ended up being a burden on just a small section of the people of the society who were being made to unduly shell out huge amounts of money while the rest ended up having to pay almost nothing at all, or may be a meagre amount. Statistical data shows that only 1.2 % of the population ended up paying the taxes (Hansen et al. 2011). The legislation has also been liable to unforeseen situations, which was very much visible when the new President of America, Donald Trump had done away with the Obamacare. Policies do not usually last for quite a long period of time, at least they are likely not to last for so long, as the existence of a policy of a former leader is contingent upon the present leader. In the case of the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, it was passed by President Obama, and annulled by President Trump (Hansen et al. 2011).

References:

Albright, H. W., Moreno, M., Feeley, T. W., Walters, R., Samuels, M., Pereira, A., & Burke, T. W. (2011). The implications of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act on cancer care delivery. Cancer, 117(8), 1564-1574.

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), HHS. (2011). Medicare program; hospital inpatient value-based purchasing program. Final rule. Federal register, 76(88), 26490.

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), HHS. (2013). Medicare program; hospital inpatient prospective payment systems for acute care hospitals and the long-term care hospital prospective payment system and Fiscal Year 2014 rates; quality reporting requirements for specific providers; hospital conditions of participation; payment policies related to patient status. Final rules. Federal Register, 78(160), 50495.

Hansen, L. O., Young, R. S., Hinami, K., Leung, A., & Williams, M. V. (2011). Interventions to reduce 30-day rehospitalization: a systematic review. Annals of internal medicine, 155(8), 520-528.