Legal and Ethical Issues in Healthcare and Nursing

Legal and
Ethical Issues in
Healthcare
SystemJP
2/2/2020

Legal and Ethical Issues in Healthcare and Nursing
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (2010)
Date of enactment of the Act
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, (PPACA) formally known as the Affordable
Care Act (ACA) and Obama-care, was enacted on March 23, 2010 by the 111th United States
congress and it is active since 2010 after signed by the ex-president Barack Obama. It is a
public welfare law famous in the people as Obama-care, includes provisions related to the
health safety, affordability issues, and effective solution to these issues (summary, 2010).
Factors lead the enactment of the Act
It is based on the aim to manage the health care facilities and Medicare structure in the
United States, overhaul of the healthcare affordability of the uninsured population, healthcare
reform is not a new concept, as it was most discussed matter of substantial debate since
1900’s , in the senate. All area about the development of this reformation was related to the
aim improve the facilities of the Medicaid to the patients without insurance (Satiani, 2011).
After the implementation of the Social Security Act 1965, many changes developed the
Medicaid and Medicare insurance program.
Main aim to lead the enactment of this act was to make effective efforts for the large
populations living without health insurance coverage and paying highly unstable rate of the
Medicare facilities. It has three main reasons behind enactment, first is improve the
healthcare quality, second one is controlling the cost of healthcare and last one is managing
the healthcare facilities (Adkinson & Chung, 2014).

Legal and Ethical Issues in Healthcare and Nursing
The criminal penalties, for violation of the Act
Section 10606 of The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (2010) provides and
discuss the various penalties imposed in the health care system, insurance providers and
individual mandates discussed below;
 Section 1104(B) PPACA describe the secretary of HHS is free to impose penalties fee
against a health plan if it fails to meet the requirements of the subsection (J)
 Section 1141(B) describes the knowing and wilfully providing fraud and wrong
information cause violation of the act and liable to the civil and other discussed
penalties
 Tax penalties imposed in Tax A and Tax B over the mandates employer
 Violation of PPACA false under the fraud and offenders are subjected to certain trials
of investigation, injunctions, freezing of the assets, and sentencing of the offenders for
committing the offences.
 Managing the Electronic Health Record of the patients is an effective innovation but
false use of the patient personal information or medical information by the Medicare
staff result in the criminal investigation and sanction of fraud penalties (Shaw,
Asomugha, Conway, & Rein, 2014).
Governed by the Act
Many agencies and individuals are governed by the enactment of The Patient Protection and
Affordable Care Act (2010) in the healthcare department in the United States;
 Public or private healthcare hospitals and healthcare department
 An individual mandates
 Business mandates