From the Trenches: A Prescription for Change
The Affordable Care Act was a massive piece of legislation. The complexities and moving parts are best understood by people who have very closely followed or implemented the law. I generally think of the ACA as three things:
1. Reform of the private insurance market with the goal of providing greater access to insurance coverage;
2. Changes to Medicare, such as closing the prescription drug donut hole; and
3. Changes to Medicaid.
Community Services Optional?
The Medicaid issue that has drawn the most attention is the matter of expanding access, appropriately called “Medicaid expansion.” But the law contains other Medicaid provisions as well. It provides incentives for states to continue to “re-balance” their systems of providing long-term care. “Re-balance” is often mentioned in quotation marks because states were never in balance. Nonetheless, through the ACA, states were provided additional federal matching funds if they would transfer more long-term care to community services and away from institutions, such as nursing homes.
The views, opinions and positions expressed by these authors and blogs are theirs and do not necessarily represent that of the Bioethics Research Library and Kennedy Institute of Ethics or Georgetown University.