Introduction
The Affordable Health Care Act (ACA) was enacted in March, 2010 (Healthcare.gov,
n.d.) to increase the availability of healthcare to Americans. Several changes have
been made to the law in recent years, and as recently as 2021 adjustments were
made to the provisions of the ACA (Andrews, 2021). In this capstone paper you will
analyze the impact of the law on expenditures for health care. (How did this act
change/affect the amount spent on healthcare?)
Activity Instructions
Using the concepts, you have learned in this class, up to and including this week,
analyze the law and potential changes on health care expenditures in the United
States from the time before the Affordable Health Care Act was passed to the
present time. Also compare the changes in expenditures on health care if a
single-payer plan was adopted.
Among other concepts that you can utilize in your analysis, you may consider the
supply and demand in the healthcare market (both on the output market and on
the input markets), elasticity, Economies of Scale and Scope, incentives facing the
market participants, the role that preventative medicine may have, moral hazard and
adverse selection issues, availability of insurance, as well as any other concepts from
the course that you find relevant.
Writing and Submission Requirements
6-8 pages (approx. 300 words per page), not including title page or
references page
References page (minimum of 5 resources)
Tips for Success
Note several items from the prompt: first, this is asking about healthcare
expenditures, NOT about expenditures on insurance (although insurance may be
something that affects healthcare expenditures). Second, this is not asking what
your opinions of the law are, rather on the effects. Regardless of whether you’re
entirely in favor or entirely against the ACA, if you were affected by the law (say you
were in the HR department of a business or in the medical industry) you would have
to follow the law regardless of your opinions.
You could think about your audience for the paper as either the public who is
interested in the percentage of GDP spent on healthcare or a hospital or other
entity in the medical industry who would like to know what the effects on their
revenues and costs will be given the new law.
