Understanding the Affordable Care ACT

This is a book meant for healthcare leaders and advanced students of health care policy throughout the world who are working daily in the healthcare fields that are impacted by the law. Incredibly, surveys of the public and of professionals in the healthcare field both show major gaps in basic knowledge about the Affordable Care Act, how it will affect one's own health, and how it will impact the landscape of healthcare in the U.S. for years to come

Understanding the Affordable Care Act is a book about change. Not the kind of change that occurs once and for all, but nonetheless important change that has already affected most people who live in the United States and its territories. The changes it has brought to the delivery and financing of healthcare in the U.S. have been broad and in some cases disruptive. For some Americans it has resulted in new avenues of access to care; for others, it has knocked them off their previous insurance plan, or increased their cost of healthcare substantially. Either way, it is without doubt the largest change to the U.S. healthcare system in almost 50 years.

A balance of approach to the ACA has been important in the preparation of this work and hopefully this openness to discuss both the advances and the challenges of the ACA will be evident to those who take the time to read the book. It is not a book that is meant to convince the reader to love the ACA if they hate it, or to hate it if they love it. It is not meant to be a book about politics, yet the author recognizes that, even after five years since its passage, public perception and attitudes about the ACA are often related to one's political position, and discussions on the ACA often evoke very visceral reactions. My hope with this book is that a deeper knowledge to the ACA's many features will bring a better understanding and result in a more informed public dialogue and reforms of the reforms where needed.