Affordable Care Act (ACA) Role in Ending Health Disparities
The United States in the past has spent less on public health activities when compared to the administrative overhead of medical care and insurance, however, though the Affordable Care Act a projected $15 billion will be provided for expansion of public health services. An increase in public health spending by 10 percent has been associated with reductions in infant mortality by 6.85 percent, cardiovascular deaths by 3.22 percent, diabetes death by 1.44 percent and cancer deaths by 1.13 percent. Many minority communities lack sufficient funds and resources, therefore, these neighborhoods could benefit significantly from this added financial resource that can help narrow that gap of inequality. |title=HHS Action Plan to Reduce Racial and Ethnic Disparities: A Nation Free of Disparities in Health and Health Care.|journal=U.S. Department of Health and Human Services|year=2011|month=April}} These additional measures will add to the benefits from expanded insurance coverage through the exchange programs, Medicare, and Medicaid. The ACA is providing the opportunity for millions of uninsured to have access to quality care. The previously uninsured will have multiple programs to help facilitate healthier living such as community promotoras, and racial and ethnic approaches to community health (REACH). Furthermore, the ACA is creating cultural and linguistic standards for healthcare professionals working in federally funded centers to maintain and meet the needs of the diverse population that is vulnerable to unequal access.
Read more about this topic: Health Equity
Famous quotes containing the words affordable, care, act, role, health and/or disparities:
“His ugliness was the stuff of legend. In an age of affordable beauty, there was something heraldic about his lack of it. The antique arm whined as he reached for another mug. It was a Russian military prosthesis, a seven-function force-feedback manipulator, cased in grubby pink plastic.”
—William Gibson (b. 1948)
“A girl must allow others to share the responsibility for care, thus enabling others to care for her. She must learn how to care in ways appropriate to her age, her desires, and her needs; she then acts with authenticity. She must be allowed the freedom not to care; she then has access to a wide range of feelings and is able to care more fully.”
—Jeanne Elium (20th century)
“If we will not interfere with our thought, but will act entirely, or see how the thing stands in God, we know the particular thing, and every thing, and every man.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“My role in society, or any artist or poet’s role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.”
—John Lennon (1940–1980)
“Many women who used to be full-time mothers are discovering that outside work gives them friends, challenges, variety, money, independence; it makes them feel better about themselves, and therefore lets them be better parents.”
—Wendy Coppedge Sanford. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, introduction (1978)
“Let it be an alliance of two large, formidable natures, mutually beheld, mutually feared, before yet they recognize the deep identity which beneath these disparities unites them.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)