YOS

American Health Care Act (AHCA) presented by Trump’s administration and Obama’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) demonstrate different visions of the parties on the role of government, rights, and responsibilities of citizens in the sphere of health care. Whereas ACA is set to achieve a nearly universal access to health care, AHCA strives to limit federal spendings and optimize the resource usage. The failure of the first version of AHCA was attributed to the alleged jeopardy, in which it would have put the insurance system in the U.S. One of the main reasons was substantial limitations proposed for ACA including less federal financing and extended privileges of states for discontinuation of service for those having ACA insurance (Hirsch et al., 2017). In addition, it did not address the major problem concerning all the U.S. states such as the increase in health care costs.

Presently, under ACA the state provides subsidized health insurance for the family of four if its annual income is below 97,000 dollars. Under AHCA that limit was raised to 150,000 (Hirsch et al., 2017).  Another difference is that individual insurance that was eventually introduced to ACA was absent in AHCA. In addition to that, ACA ranged subsidies by income level, whereas AHCA initially proposed to substitute them for the age-based system, where the amount of benefit increased with age. The reform proposed by Trump’s administration was set to allocate the 15 billion from the Patient and State Stability Fund to address multiple issues including provision of assistance to high-risk patients, widening access to prevention services, increasing insurance coverage, and so forth (Hirsch et al., 2017).   

 Ca

For this weeks discussion I chose to discuss Diabetes.  The goal of Healthy People 2020 is to reduce the risk of burden for those with Diabetes and to improve the quality of life for those with diabetes.  Diabetes occurs when the body cannot produce enough insulin and/or cannot respond appropriately to insulin. Insulin is a hormone that the body needs to absorb and use sugar as fuel for the body’s cells. Without a properly functioning insulin signaling system, blood glucose levels become elevated and other metabolic abnormalities occur, leading to the development of serious, disabling complications (Healthy People, 2018).  One of the directives from the CDC was to design wellness programs at work to prevent diabetes and other workplace illnesses.  This could also prevent complications associated with diabetes (CDC, 2017).

The role of the caregiver is a big part in patient success.  If the patient has a caregiver who is actively involved in the disease process, the outcome for the patient will be much greater.  However, the strain of taking care of a chronically ill patient, can be excruciating.  Taking care of a patient who is chronically ill and sometimes non compliant can be very exhausting, both physically and mentally.  When a patient will not comply with their treatment plan, it can make the caregiver question their role.  Non-compliance on the part of the patient is the greatest cause of caregiver strain.  In order to prevent this strain, caregivers must be able to remove themselves from the situations at times.  They can only do what they can do.  Pushing the patient will not necessarily make them comply with treatment.