How Can Policy Change Improve Preventive Health Care

David Ako-Annan

Professor Lawrence Austin

Husson University

11/08/12

Introduction

Health care has been a challenge in the United States. Historically, medicine in the United States revolved around disease treatment and procedures versus prevention. The money basically is in treating and prescribing, not prevention. Yet, we know that a number of the chronic illnesses that plague the United States could be prevented, and others could be detected early on which will increase the opportunity of a successful treatment. The paradigm in health care should shift to prevention and the Affordable Care Act is part of that shit. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is primarily concerned with patient protection. This is considered to be the most wide-ranging reform that is related to the medical system of United States in the last 45 years America (Abrams et al, 2010). President Barrack Obama introduced this plan and also convinced the Congress to pass this legislation in order to provide less expensive health care support to the residents of United States. This paper will discuss the promotion of health, prevention and screenings that will be offered to the nation as a whole as opposed to the few with insurance. This will ultimately help in improving the health system of the entire nation. This Act will make sure that it provides maximum benefit to the residents of America. A great impact will be on the use of preventive services in the United States. (Shih, Berenson &Abrams 2012) Our goal as healthcare professionals is to support these reforms and implement the medical home initiatives. Prevention, health promotion and wellness have always been our priority as a profession. As advanced practice nurses it is our time to take our place and lead towards advocating for preventive care.

Identification of Health Care Issue

According to Stokowski (2011), "Too many Americans aren't getting the preventive healthcare they need to stay healthy, avoid the onset of disease, lead productive lives, and avoid more costly care. In fact, Americans use preventive services at about half the recommended rate. Cost-sharing like copays, co-insurance, and deductibles, often leads people to forego preventive services because they can't afford them". She went on to say that, the ACA will help make wellness and prevention services affordable and easily accessible by requiring health plans to cover preventive services and by eliminating cost sharing. This Act purely aims to improve the present health care system of America and this is done by allowing great access to coverage of health issues and by also commencing new protections related to health care for those civilians who have some health insurance (Koh & Sebelius, 2010). Some highlighted health care issues that have been addressed in this Act are discussed as follows: (*Abrams, 2010).

Providing Effective and Affordable Health Care

This Act will ensure that all the American's get the medical coverage besides having to pay any increased health insurance premium to their health insurance company (Davis, 2010). The emergency room will not continue to be used as a primary care facility ...