Healthcare reform has been a government focus for years with the government trying to regulate healthcare costs through Medicare

NURS6050 Discussion – Week 1

Healthcare reform has been a government focus for years with the government trying to regulate healthcare costs through Medicare/Medicaid programs and more currently through the Affordable Care Act. The Affordable Care act relies on private insurers such as Aetna and Humana but due to low profits in specific markets these companies are exiting these markets. Unfortunately this has resulted in some markets being left with limited options for insurance coverage or worst case scenario being left without an insurance company for their exchanges (Jopson, Weaver 2016).The Affordable Care Act has met the goal of decreasing the uninsured but the age of those that are uninsured has risen which has resulted in higher costs to the insurance companies making it less lucrative to participate in the insurance exchanges. Insurance premium costs will rise more in 2017 than any year previous due to requests from insurance providers to off-set poor profit margins. There have been some positives in my opinion in the aspect that patients with pre-existing conditions cannot be