The impacts of the Affordable Care Act on Preparedness Resources and Programs

The first source that I found during my search is a workshop summary titled “The impacts of the Affordable Care Act on Preparedness Resources and Programs” (Reeve & Institute of Medicine, 2014).  I obtained the source after conducting a search in the PubMed library database. I chose the database because it has a wide variety of sources in terms of books, articles, and so forth. PubMed further provides biomedical literature which is the subject area that is covering the Affordable care Act. The database also provides high quality and up-to-date information. I searched specifically in the PubMed health section of the website which was more appropriate for this topic.   The library database is also easy to navigate and as such obtaining sources is quite easy.  I used the key concepts and terms.  The search should be simple at first and as such I used the keywords “Affordable care Act” and fortunately I was able to get this source.

This source refers to a summary of a workshop dealing with impact of ACA on catastrophic events. The workshop took place in November of the year 2013. The source dealt with benefits and the shortcomings of the Affordable Care Act especially in terms of disaster preparedness and the response initiatives. During the workshop the participants agreed that the health reforms brought about by the Act would help people to enjoy better healthcare (Reeve & Institute of Medicine, 2014). The argument was that with improved health care the population health would get better and eventually this would lead to greater resilience. Communities which are resilient tend to be better prepared for disasters and they are able to handle them. The conclusion from the study was that even though ACA had provided many incentives to the health systems to aid it in preparing for disasters and emergencies, yet there is a major role for all stakeholders in the medical sector (Reeve & Institute of Medicine, 2014).

Second source

I conducted a search on the JSTOR library database for my second source.  I founded the journal “PUBLIC HEALTH LABORATORIES AND THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT: WHAT THE NEW HEALTH-CARE SYSTEM MEANS FOR PUBLIC HEALTH PREPAREDNESS” which also dealt with the topic of the ACA and its preparedness in handling disasters and emergencies.  Then I chose the article “Law and the Public’s Health” written by Sara Rosenbaum who works in the George Washington University. Therefore, the article covered the preferred topic and I read it to ensure that it had the right information after which I decided to use it. I preferred to use JSTOR because of its wider coverage bearing in mind that it has over 10 million journal articles spread across various fields and Health happens to be one of these. The database is easy to use and offers free and low-cost access to sources. The database is composed of peer-reviewed journals and journals from trusted organizations. I used the keywords “Affordable care Act and health preparedness” and “affordable Care Act” to obtain this article.

The article was written by Mary-Beth Malcarney, Naomi Seiler and Katie Horton and published by the popular Sage Publications, Inc. The main topics covered in the article include; public health, disease outbreaks, emergency preparedness and also Medicare. The article starts by cautioning that if better preparation measures are not in place disease outbreaks such as Ebola Zaire virus could result in massive loss of lives (Malcarney, Seiler & Horton, 2015). The ACA is praised for increasing the access of health insurance which means that a wider population is now covered in the US. The ACA has transformed emergency preparedness effectively, but still a lot needs to be done.

Third

By searching on the JSTOR database I came across a source titled “Obamacare Confronts a Fiscal Crisis: Why the Affordable Care Act Doesn't Add Up” (Angell, 2013). The paper is written by Marcia Angell and then published by Sage Publications. The article had first appeared in the Huffington post. I chose the article because it provided a critique on the Affordable Care Act. The paper deals with the expectations of the Act and whether these are achievable. JSTOR has sophisticated search capabilities which mean that obtaining full-text articles via the internet is very easy. I started with a general search using the keywords “Affordable Care Act” which was followed by an advanced search.  I combined the search with the Boolean operator “and”. Therefore, my next search was aided by the keywords “Affordable Care Act and its challenges”.

The article was a review of the Obamacare and why it might not yield the expected results. The paper was written immediately after a ruling that the Obamacare should be upheld. The author narrates that much of the Affordable care Act was made to deliver a political statement rather than deal with the major health challenges and put steps forward for disaster preparedness (Angell, 2013). The argument is that the Act cannot perform what it was set out to do because it’s not well prepared and cannot be sustainable. The problem is that the Act provides a vast amount of funds to insurance companies and so forth, but has no major focus on how medicine is practiced. Another concern for instance is that the law cannot hinder insurance companies from raising premiums (Angell, 2013). The other challenge expressed in the paper is that if a Republican candidate would be elected, the Obamacare would be overturned. This was a correct prediction because at the moment President Trump is doing everything to abolish the Affordable Care Act.

Fourth source

The final source for my work was an article I had read in the past. It was a good source on the subject of “Affordable Care Act” but I could not remember the library database that I had obtained it from. However, I could remember the author. Therefore, I conducted a search in the Google scholar database with the name of the authors and luckily I found the article. Google scholar is effective as it has a wide coverage in all subjects. There are concerns that some of the sources found in this database are not of the best quality, however, I believe with refined research and commitment one can obtain good sources. The article is titled, “Changes in Self-reported Insurance Coverage, Access to Care, and Health under the Affordable Care Act” (Sommers, Gunja, Finegold & Musco, 2015).  The article is published by Jama.

The article conducts an analysis from the year 2012 to 2015 using a national telephone survey. The data obtained was further subjected to multivariable regression to provide useful conclusions. The results indicate that ACA has led to increased healthcare coverage and access to health care. A huge proportion of the population can access especially with the introduction of Medicaid which helps a wider population to enjoy insurance coverage (Sommers, Gunja, Finegold & Musco, 2015).

Conclusion

The sources prove that the Affordable care Act has received a lot of research which is a good thing. The conclusions provided by the different authors are different showing that there may be very little bias. In all sources there is the acknowledgement that the ACA has a number of positive effects to the affordability of healthcare and access of insurance coverage via Medicaid. However, there are concerns that probably the Act was prepared to send a political statement and this may hinder implementation or lead to it being overturned. The ACA has strived to prepare for disasters, but researchers argue that a lot still needs to be done by the policy makers, medical, public health, and other stakeholders.

References

Angell, M. (2013, January). Obamacare confronts a fiscal crisis: Why the Affordable Care Act doesn’t add up. In New Labor Forum (Vol. 22, No. 1, pp. 44-46). Sage CA: Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Publications.

Malcarney, M. B., Seiler, N., & Horton, K. (2015). Public health laboratories and the Affordable Care Act: what the new health-care system means for public health preparedness. Public health reports, 130(5), 543-546.

Reeve, M., & Institute of Medicine (US). (2014). The Impacts of the Affordable Care Act on Preparedness Resources and Programs: Workshop Summary. National Academies Press.

Sommers, B. D., Gunja, M. Z., Finegold, K., & Musco, T. (2015). Changes in self-reported insurance coverage, access to care, and health under the Affordable Care Act. Jama, 314(4), 366-374.