ANA’s Cipriano, AARP’s Reinhard Comment on ACA’s Undoing

President Obama signing the ACA in 2010/via Wikimedia Commons

Nurses and the Undoing of the ACA

Many in the nursing community supported the Affordable Care Act (ACA) when it was first introduced. This is understandable, given our firsthand experience of patients who didn’t seek care until they were gravely ill because they lacked health insurance. We know how disease management can change outcomes for those with chronic illness and how preventive care can make the difference between having a treatable cancer or a metastasis.

In the years since, as both supporters and detractors continued to argue over the law and its need to be improved (or scrapped, depending on your viewpoint), over 20 million people gained health insurance and access to care.

Now as Congress moves to repeal and replace the ACA with a yet-to-be-determined plan, many are concerned that major gains will be lost and once again it will be the poor and vulnerable who will suffer. (I touched on some of the concerns in my March editorial.)

To get a little more insight, I spoke with two very policy-smart nurses about what might happen and what they feel should happen.

What ANA president Pam Cipriano said:

I asked ANA president Pam Cipriano what she thought was the most critical aspect of […]

2017-03-01T10:17:14-05:00March 1st, 2017|health care policy, Nursing, nursing perspective|1 Comment
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An Oncology Nurse’s Perspective on the Health Insurance Situation

Money Bag/ by Julianna Paradisi/ all rights reserved

Costly Care

I was an oncology infusion nurse in a hospital-based ambulatory center for a number of years, many of them before the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was signed into law in 2010. Besides administering chemotherapy and blood products, I infused medications to patients with sickle cell anemia as well as chronic autoimmune disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and Crohn’s disease.

The common denominator among these diseases is the high cost of the medications used to treat them, at the time ranging from $3,000 to $10,000 per treatment. I know, because patients told me, their nurse.

I also know because uninsured patients were required to fill out paperwork declaring their lack of income, prior to receiving authorization for charitable treatment. If they were sick enough, they were admitted to the hospital for initial treatment, at more expense than outpatient infusion, until the paperwork was completed and approved.

These were particularly difficult times to be an infusion nurse.

Some patients lost their jobs during cancer treatment, because the cost of their cancer care increased their employer’s insurance coverage risk pool rates.

Other patients worked night shift before arriving, sleepless, for chemotherapy as soon as we […]

2017-02-22T14:53:49-05:00February 22nd, 2017|health care policy, Nursing, Public health|1 Comment
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As ACA Under Threat, Dawning Awareness of a Law’s Many Provisions

by matsuyuki/via Flickr

Nurses reflect the American population’s variety, and this means that many nurses support the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and many would like it repealed, whatever the replacement might be.

Like many Americans, nurses may have a broad ideological or analytical perspective on the pros and cons of the ACA or other health policy issues. Or they may choose for or against complex legislation on the basis of a single issue—like abortion funding, or insurance access for a husband or daughter with a preexisting condition, or whether they believe staffing issues can be blamed on their hospital administration or an ACA provision.

But it’s been my experience as an editor at AJN and a citizen that many people don’t really know that the ACA has multiple provisions that address quality and access issues at every level of health care.

The futures of these provisions are all in question as the Trump administration and a Republican-led Congress prepare to hack away at the ACA without a clear replacement plan.

With a kind of pre-obituary fervor, the media is beginning to pay attention to the changes the ACA brought about now that many may soon disappear—so, for seemingly the first time, are many Democratic politicians, who it’s now clear did very little to sell the ACA to their […]

2017-01-20T09:12:42-05:00January 20th, 2017|health care policy, Nursing|5 Comments
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Will Congress Listen? Americans Don’t Want ACA Repealed Without Replacement

By Daniel X. O’Neil/via Flickr

Congressional Republicans are moving quickly to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), but have yet to offer a replacement plan or indicate when one might be introduced. The possibility that more than 20 million Americans who gained health insurance through the ACA may lose their coverage is a rising concern among health care providers and patients alike. The ANA detailed its Principles for Health System Transformation in a letter to President-elect Donald Trump last month, advocating for “reforms that would guarantee access to high-quality, affordable health care for all,” and the American Medical Association sent an open letter to members of Congress last week urging them to develop a replacement plan before making any changes to the existing law.

Voters—including Trump supporters who have health insurance through the ACA—are also voicing surprise and disapproval that the current law might be repealed without a replacement. The Kaiser Family Foundation conducted focus groups of working class supporters of Mr. Trump from Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania who have insurance through the ACA marketplaces or Medicaid. The nonprofit organization’s president and chief executive, Drew Altman, detailed the results of the focus groups in an op-ed in the New York Times on January 5. Mr. Altman noted that while participants said they were disappointed in the ACA, they were “afraid they […]

2017-12-12T15:47:59-05:00January 13th, 2017|health care policy, Public health|6 Comments
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AJN in July: Opioids and Chronic Pain, Moral Distress, Prediabetes, More

CE Feature: “Appropriate Use of Opioids in Managing Chronic Pain.”

Unintentional death related to prescription opioids has been identified as a public health crisis, owing in part to such factors as insufficient professional training and medication overprescription, misuse, and diversion. The authors discuss current best practices for prescribing opioids for chronic pain, emphasizing patient assessment and essential patient teaching points regarding safe medication use, storage, and disposal, and after you find a more permanent solution people could totally quit opioids by using a detox methods that goes from medicine to even a detox tea like leptinteatox. There are some medicines or supplements that are more easy to use, depending on the problem, like the peruvian brew, that helps with erectile dysfunction and is pretty safe. After that you only need to be careful with stds diseases you can go and test at https://www.stdaware.com/chlamydia-test.

CE Feature: “Moral Distress: A Catalyst in Building Moral Resilience.”

Moral distress is a pervasive problem in nursing: an inability to act in alignment with one’s moral values is detrimental not only to the nurse’s well-being but also to patient care and clinical practice as […]

2017-05-26T00:08:51-04:00June 24th, 2016|career, health care policy, Nursing, nursing research, pain management, Patients|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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