The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has impacted the practice of health education and promotion by creating new and expanded opportunities for health education specialists to promote health. The law promotes workplace wellness by providing new health promotion opportunities for employers and employees. Additionally, the Affordable Care Act of 2010 has focused on its objectives of reducing the nation’s uninsurance rate and improving access to medical care. It has been quite successful in accomplishing these objectives. The percentage of Americans lacking health coverage was at the lowest level ever recorded, and measures of access to care had improved substantially. Prior to the ACA, many Medicare beneficiaries already had access to no-cost preventive services through their supplemental insurance plans, which may explain why the change had limited effects on this population. In addition to its impact on public health capacity, the ACA expanded access to preventive care by requiring that all insurers provide preventive services without cost-sharing and by expanding access to coverage that included these preventive services. The ACA’s Prevention and Public Health Fund, intended to give public health budgetary flexibility, provided crucial funding for public health services during the Great Recession but proved highly vulnerable to subsequent budget cuts.
In my opinion, the ACA has improved healthcare within the United States over the past decade. The ACA supports low- and moderate-income people by ensuring access to more reliable and more affordable health insurance than in the past. If the bill is repealed this would mean that millions of Americans would lose health coverage. Overall, An ACA repeal would have salient effects on American households’ economic security and well-being.
