University Healthcare Policy: ACA Reforms and Presidential Changes

This reflection paper analyzes the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010, exploring potential reforms from a presidential perspective. The student identifies issues such as high healthcare costs, tax structures, and inadequate coverage, particularly for lower-income populations and small businesses. The paper proposes changes including reducing healthcare costs, reforming tax exemptions, and mandating health insurance for all organizations. The author suggests removing tax exemptions and implementing a uniform tax to fund these changes, aiming to increase healthcare access, improve quality, and ensure equitable coverage. The paper references several studies and reports to support the proposed changes, emphasizing the goal of making healthcare more affordable and accessible to every section of society. The reflection concludes with the belief that these modifications would help lower healthcare costs for the government and improve the overall efficiency of the healthcare system.

Running head: HEALTH CARE PRINCIPLE AND POLICY
HEALTH CARE PRINCIPLE AND POLICY
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author note

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Reflection is the process of retrospection that helps individuals to look upon their past
actions and understand the scope of modification or improvement that would make the
process free from errors (HealthCare.gov, 2019). The Affordable Care Act was implemented
by the former President Obama in the year 2010 to provide the healthcare system of the
United States of America with comprehensive reform. However, there are multiple aspects
that requires reform or modifications in this ACA 2010 (Béland, Rocco & Waddan, 2018).
This reflective paper would include all the aspects that I would have changed or reformed in
the ACA 2010, if I were the president.
Healthcare system of United States of America has recently developed universal
healthcare act or system for development of uniform healthcare facilities and to mandate
healthcare coverage to every person of the society (Fletcher, 2016). However, there are
multiple complaints that care service users has registered through their feedback of ACA in
which higher cost of care services prevails (Pauly, 2018). Due to this reasons, more than 70%
of all deaths in USA occurs due to the chronic diseases and affects more than 45% of the
population (Grace et al., 2015). Hence, as a president my first attempt would be reducing the
cost of healthcare so that the care services could reach to every section of the society,
irrespective of their financial abilities or disabilities. The second aspect that I would change
or reform in the ACA 2010 would be the tax slab and the bifurcation of tax exemptions due to
which the tax for healthcare increased from 1.45 percent to 2.35 percent with 3.8 percent of
Medicare tax. Hence, these are the policies and regulations of the ACA which I would
identify and would try to reform with effective replacements (HealthCare.gov, 2019).
As mentioned in the report of Berger and Hansen (2015), it was mentioned that due to
the improper tax bifurcation and tax exemptions provided to the lower income population,
and small businesses, the complete pressure was built on the high income population and
large organisations. Through these tax exemptions, the smaller income businesses found

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paying lower penalties for not providing its employees with health insurance effective due to
which disparities were observed in the society (Garg et al., 2015). Hence, these are the
populations which did not met their needs adequately.
Therefore, as a President, I would implement certain changes and so that uniformity
and effectiveness of the care process could be understood. I would make the health insurance
process important and mandatory for all the organisations so that all the employees could
receive their health insurance from their employers. Besides this, I would remove all the tax
exemption related regulations so that everyone can receive the health insurance related
benefits. However, all these change would increase the healthcare costs for the federal
government and this cost would be collected through the implemented uniform tax upon the
population and organisations (Quadagno & Lanford, 2019). Further, I would remove the
regulation of healthcare insurance for organisations with more than 50 employees so that
every organisation, with high or low employee force could buy health insurance for their
work force (Garg et al., 2015).
All these decisions that I would take as a President would support the right of every
individual to receive affordable and quality healthcare interventions. As per Garg et al.
(2015), application of affordable care act 2010, aimed to spread equal healthcare
opportunities by implementing the uniform cost and quality and all these changes or reforms
that I would be implementing upon this act would increase its acceptability in the society.
Further as per Quadagno and Lanford, (2019), people who were using tax exemptions
negatively for their health benefits, would be placed in the tax slabs so that they could also
provide their healthcare taxes for the benefit of the complete US healthcare system.
The changes that I would implement in the ACA 2010 of USA health system would
increase its acceptability as all the costs that were implemented only one section of the

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society would be exempted and they would also be able to receive effective care for their
critical illnesses (Quadagno & Lanford, 2019). Hence, I believe that implementation of this
process would help the healthcare facilities to provide effective and quality care to the
patients from each section of the society. All these modifications would help to lower the
healthcare process related loss for the government significantly and through the uniform
application of taxes the government would be able to receive ample amount of taxes that
could be used to make the healthcare process effective and efficient (Grace et al., 2015).
Hence, in this reflection paper, I provided my insights upon the Affordable Care Act
2010and mentioned the aspects that I believe, as a President need to be reformed or changed
to increase the acceptability and uniformity of the care process.

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References
Béland, D., Rocco, P., & Waddan, A. (2018). Obamacare in the Trump Era: Where are we
Now, and Where are we Going?. The Political Quarterly, 89(4), 687-694.
Berger, F. G., & Hansen, C. W. (2015). The Medicare loophole: cost-sharing for screening
colonoscopy.
Fletcher, R. A. (2016). Keeping up with the cadillacs: What health insurance disparities,
moral hazard, and the Cadillac Tax mean to the Patient Protection and Affordable
Care Act. Medical anthropology quarterly, 30(1), 18-36.
Garg, T., Tan, C., Ha, C., Caughlin, M., & Chen, Z. (2015). Medicare and its Economical
Solutions.
Grace, A. M., Horn, I., Hall, R., & Cheng, T. L. (2015). Children, families, and disparities:
pediatric provisions in the Affordable Care Act. Pediatric Clinics, 62(5), 1297-1311.
HealthCare.gov. (2019). Affordable Care Act (ACA) - HealthCare.gov Glossary. Retrieved
11 August 2019, from https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/affordable-care-act/
Pauly, M. (2018). Subsidizing Health Insurance: Tax Illusion and Public Choice for a Mostly
Private Good. In James M. Buchanan (pp. 187-203). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Quadagno, J., & Lanford, D. (2019). The Obama Health Care Legacy: The Origins,
Implementation, and Effort to Repeal the Affordable Care Act of 2010. In Looking
Back on President Barack Obama’s Legacy (pp. 69-92). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.