Health Policy News

HealthCare Policy News
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“Calif. Bill Targets Profiteering In Addiction Treatment, Dialysis Industries” by Chad Terhune
The Key players in the policy discussed in the article include various health providers and insurance agencies. It specifically involves providers catering to addiction cases that require dialysis and private insurance companies such as Blue Shield California. The challenge that the policy aims to address if registration to insurance plans aimed at making profits. After the application of the ACA policy, insurance providers were barred from refusing to enroll patients with pre-existing conditions. Third parties have taken this opportunity to volunteers to pay for premiums for patients with addiction problems. These institutions fake information about the patient’s and use it to request exorbitant payouts from private insurance companies. This is despite the fact that the patients would qualify for Medicaid and Medicare payment plans. These problems have been recurring since 2014 when ACA became operational. Since then, Blue shield alone has paid out premiums worth 64 million dollars o third-party premium payers in California (Terhune, 2018).
The policy affects the supplier of the health policy through excessive payments imposed on the regular premium payers. The role of the legislators is to ensure their constituents are changed fairly. Some of the funds used for these false claims are federal resources and therefore the need to prevent healthcare funds hemorrhage.

The demanders of the policy are especially private insurance who are defrauded through the false and exaggerated claims. The purchases of the policy are the consumers of healthcare insurance. If more premiums have to be paid out for dialysis cases, the risk associated with it goes up. This means that other patients paying for the same have to pay an inflated cost that later goes into the pockets of a few people. For individuals, the main impact is a reduced quality of care. The crude for-profit third parties do not care about the well-being of the patient, and therefore there is increased the risk of relapsing.
“With Some Republican Support, Virginia Edges Closer To Medicaid Expansion” by Megan Pauly
The main players the policy under review is the state of Virginia; its constituents is legislators and the healthcare system. The policy under review concerns the expansion of the Medicaid healthcare plans. This will be in accordance with the ACA guidelines rolled out in 2014. Since then, there are still 8 states that have not implemented the expansion with one of the states being Virginia. This article especially discusses the expansion with regard to who qualifies for Medicaid insurance plans. Currently, adults without children or three-persona families with a salary exceeding $10000 do not qualify for assistance (Pauly, 2018). This is despite that these families could be living in total poverty and without any other source of health insurance. This issue is ongoing an expected to be resolved when the Senate which has a Republican majority accepts to institute the expansion recommendations.
The supplier of this policy is the legislative arm of the state of Virginia. Its aim should be to ensure affordable and sustainable healthcare for the residents. This is why it is important to closely evaluate the plan and the impacts of such aspects and the taxation of hospitals. The demanders of the policy are the residents of Virginia that showed an inclination to preferring expansion is November voting by increasing the number of Democrats elected (Pauly, 2018). They will benefit from a provision of more affordable health insurance. The impact of the policy ion individuals will be increased access to healthcare. However, the proposed increase taxation on hospitals could contravene these benefits. This taxation is expected to cater for 75% of the expansion cost. The healthcare providers will simply bill the excess finances required to the consumer. This might means that the cost of care will continue being unaffordable to the residents.
References
Pauly, M. (2018). With Some Republican Support, Virginia Edges Closer To Medicaid Expansion. Kaiser Health News. Retrieved 29 March 2018, from https://khn.org/news/with-some-republican-support-virginia-edges-closer-to-medicaid-expansion/
Terhune, C. (2018). Calif. Bill Targets Profiteering In Addiction Treatment, Dialysis Industries. Kaiser Health News. Retrieved 29 March 2018, from https://khn.org/news/calif-bill-targets-profiteering-in-addiction-treatment-dialysis-industries/