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Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

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The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Impact on Quality of Care A steady stream of information has flooded our media sources talking about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) for several years now. This act signed into law by President Obama on March 23, 2010 has been one of the biggest steps towards a comprehensive health care reform for all Americans. The fundamental goals of the ACA are to decrease the cost of health care, increase the quality of health care services and make health care accessible to all, particularly the uninsured (Williams, 2013). The increase of individuals that will be soon be insured will have a huge impact on the existing structure of our health care system, especially the quality of care that can be provided to patients along with the implementation or improvements that are being made to the electronic health record systems being used (or implemented) in hospitals or other health care settings. There have been many critics and supporters of the ACA since it was signed into law in 2010. One of the most significant changes being discussed is the requirement for all individuals to have health insurance either provided by their employer or by purchasing an individual insurance plan; all individuals are required to have health insurance by January 1, 2014 or pay tax penalties that will be imposed. Individual health insurance plans will be available through a state-based American Health Benefit Exchange (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2013).
These exchanges promise to make purchasing qualified insurance coverage easier by requiring all states to adopt a single set of operating rules for eligibility verification (Kaiser Family Foundation, 2013). In order to make these insurance plans more affordable for individuals that are struggling financially, premium credits and cost-sharing subsidies will be granted that

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