The ACA’s Effects on Key Target

#12 The ACAs Effect on Key Targets
This module’s readings provide analysis and insight into the ACA’s effect on various targets/ beneficiaries, as well as different ways to analyze its impact based on key health/ public health factors. In 3 paragraphs, discuss how the ACA can be assessed on these key variables:

• Access to health insurance/health care for the uninsured and underinsured
• Impact on financing and cost containment
• Contributions to broad aspects of health, wellness, and public health
• Contributions to social equity and social justice
• What is/will be needed (in terms of policy, financing, and/or politics) to maintain and increase the reach of the ACA and ensure its long-term viability

Critically Analyzing the ACA

Program Learning Outcomes

• PLO 1. Promote community capacity, health, and well-being using results from analysis of health problems, issues, strengths, and the needs of diverse populations.
• PLO 3. Create solutions for public health concerns found in diverse communities by assessing their major environmental, social, behavioral, cultural, political, legal, and regulatory factors.
• PLO 4. Design public health access and quality strategies/policies for diverse populations.
• PLO 6. Demonstrate professional and ethical leadership inclusive of strategic planning and decision making skills.

Course Learning Outcomes

• CLO 1. Categorize and analyze ways of analyzing health problems, issues, strengths, and needs of diverse populations to help bring about community capacity, health, and well-being. (ties to PLO 1)
• CLO 3. Assess proposed solutions for improving public health from an interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary perspective, incorporating evaluation of various factors. (ties to PLO 3)
• CLO 4. Evaluate policies and proposed solutions for improving health and public health with an eye toward programs to serve and benefit diverse populations. (ties to PLO 4)
• CLO 6. Evaluate and employ ethical/ bioethical, cultural, and moral issues and solutions related to public health policy and decision making. (ties to PLO 6)

Module Learning Outcomes

• MLO 2. Assess and articulate broad approaches and theories associated with public policy in the context of healthcare policy. (ties to CLO 1)
• MLO 3. Evaluate different ways of analyzing public policy in a healthcare context via application of these models. (ties to CLO 1)
• MLO 9. Assess ACA’s impact on key targets and beneficiaries in terms of various evaluative factors: access to health care; equity and inclusion; quality of care and health outcomes; elimination or addition of health disparities, etc. (ties to CLO 3)
• MLO 11. Evaluate and critique health disparities and cultural competency in the context of the key targets and beneficiaries of the Affordable Care Act and other health/public health programs. (ties to CLO 4)
• MLO 12. Identify and assess current and future challenges to ACA implementation in terms of expanding access to the uninsured and the law’s financial/market sustainability. (ties to CLO 4)
• MLO 15. Assess and characterize key ethical/bioethics issues and questions in public policymaking. (ties to CLO 6)
• MLO 16. Characterize and differentiate key ethical codes and policies in health (e.g., American Public Health Association, etc.) and apply to them to public policymaking. (ties to CLO 6)

References

• Alonzo-Zaldizar, R. (2012, March 28). Spin meter: Now they’re all calling it “Obamacare.”CSN News.
• Bui, Q., & Sanger-Katz, M. (2015, Oct. 30). We mapped the uninsured. You’ll notice a pattern.New York Times.
• Currie, J., & Schwandt, H. (2016, April). Inequality: The good news from a county-level approach.NBER Working Paper 22199, JEL No. J11.
• Evans, M. (2016, March 5). The Affordable Care Act isn’t wiping out unpaid hospital bills.Modern Healthcare.
• McMorrow, S., & Holohan, J. (2016, June). The widespread slowdown in health spending growth implications for future spending projections and the cost of the Affordable Care Act, an update.Robert Wood Johnson Foundation & Urban Institute.
• Newkirk, V. (2016, June 15). The less Affordable Care Act?The Atlantic.
• Quealy, K., & Singer-Katz, M. (2014, Oct. 29). Obama’s health law: Who was helped most?New York Times.
• Rubin, J., et al. (2016). Are better health outcomes related to social expenditure?RAND Institute.
• Young, J. (May 4, 2016). More red states embrace Obamacare, just as long as you don’t call it that.Huffington Post.