The Effects of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act on Health Expenditure

According to the US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health, the Patient

Protection and Affordable Care Act will ensure that about 94% of Americans have health insurance cover.

This will effectively reduce the uncovered Americans by 31 million only rendering 15 million uncovered.

The bill had five major aims. First, it aimed at achieving universal coverage, secondly, improving the

fairness, quality and affordability of health insurance coverage. Thirdly, it had the goal of improving

health-care value, quality and efficiency while reducing the wasteful spending. Thirdly, it aimed at

strengthening primary health-care access while bringing about long-term changes in the availability of

primary and preventive health-care and finally, it had the aim of making strategic investments in public

health through expansions of clinical preventive care and community health investments. These aims and

the provisions in the PPACA, have huge financial implications.

The Chief Actuary of Centers for Medicare estimates that the National Health Expenditure will

rise by $ 311 billion (0.9%) in the interval between 2010 and 2019. This is as a result of the substantial

increase in coverage of uninsured people. Usually people with health insurance use more health services

than those without health insurance and since about 31 million people will now obtain cover, then this

explains the significant rise in the overall cost of healthcare. The savings provisions by Medicare are also

another factor that increases the National Health Expenditure. Since children up to 26 years can be

classified as dependents, an estimated 485,000 children will gain coverage increasing the expenditure by

about $0.9 billion.

Pharmaceutical companies will have to pay more excise tax. For instance, manufacturers and

importers of brand name prescription were paying $2.5 billion which is estimated to rise to 4.1 billion in

2018, then set to rise by 2.8 billion annually. In terms of dental healthcare, America dental Association

(ADA) expected that more children will take advantage of dental benefits than adults therefore increasing

dental spending by an estimated $4 billion.

 References

American Dental Association (Producer) (2013 August 19) Affordable Care Act, dental benefits

examined retrieved from http://www.ada.org/en/publications/ada-news/2013-archive/august/affordable-

care-act-dental-benefits-examined

Foster R.S. (2010) Estimated Financial Effects of the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act"

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Gruber J. (2011) The Impacts of the Affordable Care Act: How Reasonable Are the Projections?

Rosenbaum, S. (2011 Jan-Feb) The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act: Implications for Public

Health Policy and Practice [Web post]retrieved from

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3001814/