Obamacare Impact

What impact does Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) have on seniors?
Today over 50 million seniors are enrolled in Medicare. Medicare is program that provides healthcare coverage for people over 65 years age in the United States. The research will focus on the impact of Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) on the current Medicare system. The changes for seniors will effect seniors on the cost of preventive care, preventive care recommendations, prescription drug coverage and consumer protection. The positive impact for seniors will be shown for each program change listed.
Medicare has created a new strategy for long term wellness of seniors. Under Obamacare seniors are now covered for yearly wellness visits at no cost to 20% copay (Caplinger).
Each senior had multiple choices depending on the need of the patient’s medication prescribed. Thus one of the problems was the coverage was lacked between coverage limits and personal payment. The term “donut hole”: refers to the gap that happens when Medicare beneficiaries reach the end of their prescription drug coverage limits but haven’t meet their spending limits for the year (Obamacare and Medicare). In that period of time beneficiaries must pay full price for their prescriptions. When this happens it can be very expensive for seniors especially those on limited budget.
The goal of lawmakers had for Obamacare was to provide amore comprehensive program in terms of financial coverage to help with the shortfall of the existing Medicare program. The restrictions in covering a full program of prescription coverage is now addressed for the beneficiary. The goal was to keep seniors taking the prescription drugs steadily rather than have seniors limit prescription drug usage if a patient did not have the funds to covers the “doughnut hole”. The overall change in coverage was to help those seniors with
Prior to Obamacare it was difficult for seniors to get information regarding long term care facilities. Today information is available based on a database of complaints and violation for any given facility receiving Medicare payment. Thus Obamacare program is holding long term care facilities accountable for patient care and expenses. This is process makes each facility transparent to each other.
The transparency should provide consumer protection for residents and their families. The new program provides for protection when complaints are filed about the quality of care or environment of a long term care facility. States are required to have due process in place to provide protection of the resident and their family without retaliation from care provider or care facility. This new protection program also allows for protection from Medicare fraud.
Reduction in Medicare fraud is goal of the Obamacare. Medicare beneficiaries now have access to billing information online or by mail (Leonard). The information is accessable in a quarterly summary of their benefits. Thus consumers have the ability to check if they are being billed for false claims. This new program holds the beneficiary and the provider accountable to claim paid by