What to Know About the ACA After Third Failed SCOTUS Challenge

As trusted sources of information related to health and health care, nurses should be informed about health care laws that govern access to care.

The issue.

On June 17, 2021, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) rejected the latest constitutional challenge to the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The ACA lawsuit was linked to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of late 2017, which “zeroed out” the penalties imposed by the ACA’s controversial individual mandate requiring people to have health insurance. Following this, in February 2018 a coalition of 18 states and two individuals filed a lawsuit challenging the legality of the ACA because the individual mandate was unenforceable.

While most pundits initially dismissed the seriousness of the threat of the lawsuit, this changed in June 2018 when the U.S. Department of Justice under President Trump expressed support for the suit, asking the court to strike down not the entire law but just the ACA’s prohibitions against insurers’ denying coverage to people with preexisting conditions and against charging higher premiums because of health status (the Justice Department later expanded its support of the lawsuit to include repeal of the entire ACA). Historically, it is unusual for the Justice Department to […]

2021-07-07T10:30:18-04:00June 28th, 2021|health care policy, Nursing, Public health|0 Comments
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Finally a Mandate for Masks in North Dakota-But What Will It Mean?

by Joanne Disch, PHD, RN, FAAN, former president of the American Academy of Nursing

On Monday, November 9, North Dakota governor Doug Burgum issued a new policy that allows health care workers who are COVID-positive but asymptomatic to continue working at hospitals and nursing homes. This is in response to a dramatic increase of COVID cases, with hospitals at near 100% capacity and a shortage of an adequate supply of nurses across the state.

And on Wednesday, November 11, the state set its eighth-consecutive daily record for active cases, reaching 11,656. According to the Associated Press, North Dakota continued “to lead the nation in daily new COVID-19 cases per capita . . . , with one in every 83 residents of the state testing positive for the virus in just the past week.”

Unsurprising result of state’s laissez-faire approach.

While shocking, this is not surprising: North Dakota has been one of the states that has consistently rejected mask mandates or social distancing practices and been slow to reduce elective procedures or limit the business hours of restaurants and bars.

Without having taken these preventive steps, the state now faces a significant crisis. It’s unconscionable that nurses […]

2020-11-17T13:01:05-05:00November 17th, 2020|health care policy, Nursing, Public health|0 Comments
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How Do You Feel When Your Patients Can’t Afford Care?

“Every day in the United States, nurses watch patients forgo beneficial treatment they cannot afford despite nursing’s moral standard to treat patients without regard to financial condition.”

How often have you been left, pretty much on your own, to figure out a way that your uninsured and/or homeless patients have access to something (anything!) that will maintain their health when you aren’t with them? Are there meds they can’t pay for? Do they need prenatal care that they can’t afford? Can they possibly function without home care of some kind?

Moral distress as a call to seek systemic change.

In “Ethical Issues: The Moral Distress of Nurses When Patients Forgo Treatment Because of Cost” in this month’s AJN (free to access until October 7), Douglas Olsen and Linda Keilman discuss the moral distress of nurses when we are unable to meet the needs of patients who don’t have the money to pay for care in our for-profit health care system. […]

2020-09-17T07:03:34-04:00September 17th, 2020|health care policy, Nursing, nursing perspective, patient experience, Patients, Public health|0 Comments
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Looking Back to Look Forward: Top Health, Nursing, Policy, and Clinical Practice News of 2019

Photo via Flickr / Luis Marina

Each January, AJN takes a close look at the most noteworthy health care–related news of the past year, from general health stories and policy to specific nursing and clinical issues. Which stories stood out in 2019? Here’s a rundown:

Health care news

  • Negative trends intensify for key measures of population health and access to care. As life expectancy declines again in the United States, signaling a three-year trend, the Affordable Care Act remains under threat from GOP-sponsored litigation; children have been losing coverage; new work requirements and paperwork barriers are undercutting Medicaid coverage gains; and rising drug costs are in the spotlight.
  • Cyberattacks and hospital data security. Health care organizations’ cybersecurity spending lags behind that of other industries.
  • A changing climate. As environmental protections are weakened or rolled back, new research details the significant and long-lasting health consequences of climate change.
  • Women’s reproductive health. The U.S. maternal mortality rate continues to rise, and several states have passed legislation to curtail abortion access.
  • Society in distress. In 2019, Americans experienced the public health consequences of political discord, poverty, and unaddressed social needs, as magnified by the crisis at the border and rising rates of gun violence and homelessness.

2020-01-14T09:16:17-05:00January 14th, 2020|health care policy, Nursing|0 Comments
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2020: The International Year of the Nurse and Midwife

By Barbara Stilwell, PhD, RN, FRCN, executive director, Nursing Now, a three-year global campaign seeking to raise the profile of nurses

Barbara Stilwell of Nursing Now

The World Health Organization has declared that 2020, the 200th anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birth, will be the International Year of the Nurse and the Midwife. The year represents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to celebrate and thank nurses and midwives for all that they do, and to make clear the critical contribution that our professions can make in achieving universal health coverage. It is urgent that we make the most of 2020.

A global health care workforce crisis.

We are edging ever closer to a significant global health care workforce crisis. The WHO estimates that we are facing a shortfall of 18 million health workers to achieve and sustain universal health coverage by 2030—and approximately half of that shortfall, 9 million health workers, are nurses and midwives.

It is high time, therefore, that countries think radically differently about the way they train, deploy, and look after their health workers, particularly nurses and midwives. This will require political commitment and domestic resource mobilization. Countries will need to increase their allocation to health budgets to invest in their nursing and midwifery […]

2020-01-03T10:39:51-05:00January 3rd, 2020|health care policy, Nursing, nursing perspective, Public health|0 Comments
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Views expressed on the blog are solely those of the authors or persons quoted. They do not necessarily reflect AJN’s views or those of Wolters Kluwer Health/Lippincott Williams and Wilkins.
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