Patient Protection And Affordable Care Case Analysis

In Massachusetts, the lawmaking is a direct outgrowth of a deliberative policy body called the General Court reflecting the legacy of colonial administrative structure. The new ideas for a law are built at the juncture where the legislature, executive and the public interrelate with each other whereby the first step of process of a new law emerges. Ideas for a new policy can emerge either from a legislator, government body or public. Once an idea for new policy or change in existing policy is floated, it becomes the responsibility of a legislator to form this idea as a bill and that is where the formal policy process begins.
The trigger for the passing of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 came from a sustained movement and public awareness campaigns by the organizations of community health workers in Massachusetts which focused on spreading awareness in public on the expansion of access to preventive services, reduction of the social and financial costs of chronic disease, and elimination of racial and ethnic disparities (Davis and Somers, 2011). For a new agenda to gain traction, it is important that it has mass popular support and the advocacy by these organization and their
So the collaborative process needed interdependent and diverse stakeholders to come together to carve out policy. In the case of the above cited bill to become law, it was the result of a shared commitment among all the stakeholders- associations of community health workers, public and the legislators- who prioritized the policy agenda advanced by the community health workers’ organizations with public support (Miller and Legion, 2006). So the desire for a partnership among heightened public awareness led to building minimum support among all the stakeholders for the bill to become the law in