Briefly summarize the ACA’s key features as enacted, and as changed in recent years by the Trump administration

Order Instructions

you learned about the consequences of race, class and gender to health care access and outcomes. You learned about the consequences of race, class and gender to health care access and outcomes. You learned about the creation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and recent changes in how healthcare is delivered. These required readings are also linked here again for your consideration:

Abelson, R. (2020, Mar 12). Virtual health’s turning point: The public turns to telemedicine https://search-proquest-com.vlib.excelsior.edu/newspapers/virtual-healths-turning-point-public-turns/docview/2376082490/se-2?accountid=134966 . New York Times

Case, A. and Deaton, A. (2020, February 20) How Healthcare Costs Hurt American Workers and Benefit the Wealthy. https://time.com/5785945/health-care-problems-america/ Time

Garfield, R., Orgera, K., & Damico, A. (2020, November 6). Key Facts About the Uninsured Population https://www.kff.org/uninsured/issue-brief/key-facts-about-the-uninsured-population/ . Kaiser Family Foundation.

Tolbert, J., Orgera, K., & Damico, A. (2021, January 21). The Coverage Gap: Uninsured Poor Adults in States that Do Not Expand Medicaid https://www.kff.org/medicaid/issue-brief/the-coverage-gap-uninsured-poor-adults-in-states-that-do-not-expand-medicaid/ . Kaiser Family Foundation.

BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-24370967 . Obamacare: Has Trump managed to kill off Affordable Care Act?

you also learned how medicine functions as a social institution and how inequality creates dysfunction. Health care reform has been on the public policy agenda for decades in the United States. There have been reforms at the edges since Truman’s time, but Barack Obama promised more comprehensive health care reform in his 2008 campaign. On March 23, 2010, after more than a year of debate, negotiation, and backlash, President Obama signed the ACA into US law. A lot has happened since the passage of the ACA. President Donald Trump was elected in 2016, running on a platform to eliminate Obama’s signature healthcare reform. With a Republican legislature during his first two years in office and through regulation, many features of the ACA were eliminated or scaled back.

Engage

Before beginning this activity, be sure to read the Module Notes and the assigned readings and viewings. Use as much detail from the readings and other learning materials in the module as possible to answer the following questions.

1) Briefly summarize the ACA’s key features as enacted, and as changed in recent years by the Trump administration. For example, how has health insurance coverage expanded and/or contracted since 2010?

2) Identify and describe two issues related to health we should address in the U.S. and how we might improve outcomes through policy or individual action.