An article related

United States National Health Care Policies and Nursing
Student’s AutoTextList s NoStyle t “Please type in your first and last name” Name
Institution
Abstract
The United States Health Care policy is guided by the Affordable Care Act (2010).The implementation of this act by the Barack Obama administration and subsequent governments has had a great impact on the United States Healthcare delivery system in the aspects of the organization of the health sector and medical practice. Its availability and acceptability among the American people and medical practitioners specifically registered nurses are key in assessing the success of the policy in the long term. As of now, it is evident that the Affordable Care Act has made considerable progress towards the achievement of accessible, affordable, sustainable and quality health care. This article analyses the impact of the changes in the healthcare policy of the United States on the opportunities for nursing to improve health care challenges nurses are likely to face and how these opportunities can improve the status and visibility of nursing in the United States.
Keywords: Affordable Care Act, Health care policy, Registered nurses, Health sector.
United States National Health Care Policies and Nursing
Changes in the US health delivery system
Before the enactment of the Affordable Care Act, 48.6 million Americans were not covered by health insurance policies. This accounted for more than 15% of the Americans citizens(NCBI,2016).

This posed a big challenge to them in acquiring medical services they needed.The enactment of the Affordable Care Act has had a great impact in ensuring all American citizens are covered by health insurance policies. Despite the achievements to date, a lot needs to be done to lower the number of uncovered Americans. In the nursing sector, this is an opportunity for them, since with the expected increase in Americans covered by medical insurance policies will significantly increase the demand for medical services. As a result, there will be a shortage of medical professionals, especially nurses. This drastic increase in demand will lead to employment of more nurses and potentially increases terms of service for nurses.
The Congress of the United States has made efforts to standardize the cost of medical services. There has been a disparity in the charging by public hospitals and private clinics with the latter charging a lot more than public hospitals. This control of cost is very important in ensuring that all medical services are offered in an affordable manner and that the quality of the services is not compromised. Allowing hospitals to have full independence in the
determining of the cost of medical services could negatively impact the quality of services by making hospitals profit based entities. As opposed to this, a quality-based system offers nurses the opportunity to deliver their services in hospitals in a more efficient manner. However, with more cost control, it may have a detrimental impact in the long term since further cost control could compromise the quality of services and worker motivation due to potentially reduced salaries.
The Affordable Care Act provides that hospitals be fined up to 3% of their medical payments if a given percentage of their patients come back for further medication within 30 days after being discharged (NCBI, 2016). As per the Act, readmission of patients within 30 days of discharge from hospital is indicative of poor care in the hospital concerned. In the year 2015 alone a record 2,592 hospitals in the USA had readmission penalties imposed on them. This presents nurses with an opportunity to ensure that their services are of acceptable quality and hence reduce cases of negligence of duty. Although these provisions are good in ensuring medical services are of the highest quality, its ideal goal should not be to punish hospitals in some inevitable patient cases. There have to be provisions for cases of patient ignorance and hence the generality of the Act should be reviewed by the Congress.
Emerging challenges due to changes in Health delivery system
Despite the benefits of the current health care policy, there are some challenges in its implementation. The Affordable Care Act has left emergency departments in hospitals with a huge risk of compromising the quality of services and the safety of patients. There has been a noticeable increase in the emergency room use in hospitals. This is hugely attributed to the increase in patient activity in hospitals Vis a Vis a fairly constant number of medical professionals in hospitals, especially registered nurses. This a dangerous trend bearing in mind that in emergency departments time is of the essence.
Opportunities for nurses
With the projected increase in population and the acquisition of health insurance policies for uninsured Americans, the demand for physicians will drastically increase (NCBI, 2016). Therefore, measures should be put in place to ensure training of medical practitioners and capacity building in the medical sector. However, this should be done in a timely and effective manner to ensure no patients will go without the vital health care they need.To counter the problem of shortage of registered nurses and advanced practice registered nurses, there has to be commitment on the part of the government to provide grants and funds to understaffed hospitals
Conclusion
Availability of affordable and high-quality health care for all Americans remains a duty of the US government. The importance of nurses in achieving such goals cannot be overemphasized since they play a central role in health systems. Also, adjustments should be made to shift funds channeled to non-clinical areas to clinical areas of medicine. Medical care benefits are indispensable in stimulating and maintaining holistic and all-inclusive health care.
References
National Center for Biotechnology information, (2018).United States National
Health Care Policies. Retrieved
From: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4744066/
National Centre for Biotechnology Information, (2018).United States Health Care
Reform Progress to Date and Next Steps. Retrieved
From: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5069435/