University Health Policy Essay: KFF, Exchange Plans, and Obamacare

This essay examines health exchange plans, including Bronze, Silver, Gold, and Platinum options, and their coverage levels. It highlights the role of the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) as a non-profit organization providing information on health policies and their impact. The essay discusses the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), also known as Obamacare, focusing on its goals, benefits, and drawbacks, such as premium tax credits and eligibility criteria. It analyzes the KFF website's utility, emphasizing its user-friendly features like location-based highlights and statistical data, while suggesting improvements for clearer data presentation. The conclusion underscores the design of insurance plans for different financial levels and medical needs, and it promotes the KFF website as a reliable source for understanding health policies, advocating for more accessible plans and improved website content.

Runninghead: HEALTH POLICY
HEALTH POLICY
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author Note

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Health exchange plan is a kind of insurance coverage that includes the coverage of
surgical and medical expenses incurred by the insured. This health exchange plans sometimes
also pays the expense of dental. Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) is a non-profit organisation.
KFF is an information organisation focused on the effect of different health policies on
people. This essay will shed light on the utility of KFF, different health exchange plans, the
pros, and cons of them.
The health exchange plan with lowest premium is the Bronze plan. It has a minimal
cost way to insure oneself from the worst medical conditions. The company pays 40% of the
insurance money, and the client pays 60% in the insurance plan. Silver health exchange plan
has a moderate monthly premium. The costs of care are also moderate. The ratio of insurance
money paid by the company and the client is 70:30. The gold plan has a high monthly
premium and cost is low when one needed care. The amount of medical costs paid by the
client is lower. The company pays 80%, and the client pays the rest of the amount in the gold
plan. Platinum health insurance has the highest monthly premium plan. (kff.org, 2020).The
cost is lowest when someone needs care. The company starts to pay its share of medical
treatment costs earlier than the other insurance plans. The company bears the 90% cost, and
the consumer pays the rest 10% (kff.org, 2020). The patient Protection and Affordable Care
Act (PPACA) is a law about the new guidelines and rules on the acceptance, offering, and
administration of healthcare coverage in the USA (Hall & Lord, 2014). This act is also
known as Obamacare, enacted on 23 March 2010. The chief goal of the act is to provide most
of the people with affordable health insurance. PPACA gives people premium tax credit that
helps them to decrease their household expenses (healthcare.gov, 2020).

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The benefit of the bronze plan is maximum in serious sickness and major health
conditions. The monthly premium is low, and the payable amount for routine care is more.
The drawback is its limited medical facilities. This silver plan demands the client to pay some
extra amount than the bronze insurance to cover extra routine care, which is a drawback and
advantage of the plan is the detailed medical facilities. The advantage of the gold insurance
plan covers a huge number of medical injuries, but again it is not helpful for most people
because of its high cost. However, Gold insurance choice for people who qualify for cost-
sharing reduction and useful to obtain some extra savings. The drawback of the platinum
plan is that the premium money is very high. The insurance plan is useful for people who use
a huge number of medical care. The Obamacare law seems very demanding in the first
glance, but only people with incomes between the ranges of 100% to 400% of the federal
poverty level are eligible to get the advantage of the law (Burke, Misra & Sheingold, 2014).
The drawback of this act is that it is not for everyone. The cost is only decreased for the
people who come under a particular category (kff.org, 2020).
The information available on the website of KFF, is well designed, produce non-
partisan source of fact, journals and helpful for people to understand the policy, policy reform
law, benefits and choose the ideal policy for them. The feature of location-based highlights is
a useful tool, where the user can scroll down to the map to see the location or state-based
initiatives on health policy. Statistical data providing standard errors, non- standard errors,
weights and variable definitions, makes the website more user-friendly. The yearly health
benefits survey reports come with reports highlights or summary as well as the whole report.
The interactive graphics present on the website give the user a clear understanding of the
changes in premiums and other data about worker contributions in different firms. However,
the website should include more highlights to make people understand the critical statistical
data and graphs.

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In conclusion, it can be stated that the different insurance plans are designed in
keeping on mind the different financial level and medical necessity of individuals. The KFF
website is a trustable and useful source to gather a clear understanding of different health
policies. However, there should be more plans which can be achieved by people with all
economic background. The website of KFF is well designed, but it can be more concise with
pictorial and video references.
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Citations and References:
Burke, A., Misra, A., & Sheingold, S. H. (2014). Premium affordability, competition, and
choice in the health insurance marketplace, 2014. Washington (DC): Department of
Health and Human Services, Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and
Evaluation.
Hall, M. A., & Lord, R. (2014). Obamacare: what the Affordable Care Act means for patients
and physicians. Bmj, 349, g5376.
healthcare.gov. (2020). Affordable Care Act (ACA) - HealthCare.gov Glossary. Retrieved 25
February 2020, from https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/affordable-care-act/
The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. (2020). The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.
Retrieved 25 February 2020, from https://www.kff.org/