The Affordable Care Act and Family Planning Services: Article Review Example

Author's proposed purpose/goal of the Article:

The article focuses on the importance of safety net programs that of the Public Health Service Act. More intimately, the article highlights the Title X program that provides funds for various reproductive health services aiming for people who come from low-income categories. Furthermore, the author concentrates on the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid enlargement that has seen the provision of services to low-income earners heighten. The intended audience of the article is the sexually active individuals. The article is very clear on how title X of the public health service act offer funding for various reproductive health services, with greater priority offered on the low-income person since the question on Medicaid expansion and Title X program, has stayed on the continued need.it is important to note that through the current project a broader highlight is recognized on the significance of the safety net programs.

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Analysis of Key Issues:

The prominent issues in the article are the reproduction health care and Title X. According to the article, the United States has encountered several challenges in dealing with the reproductive health of the nation. As a result, poor reproductive health, the US records some of the highest adolescent pregnancies, infant mortality rate and preterm birth in recent years, especially to racial and ethnic minorities. However, the article states that the challenges could be overcome by the proper provision of family planning services like education, medical services, contraception, and counseling. The Title X program has been successful in addressing the reproductive health issues by sufficiently providing funds for family planning services. Moreover, the Title X helps the Medicaid-patients with their enrollment thus enhancing the health care access to vulnerable populations. Nevertheless, the articles note that the efficiency and need of the Title X project have been on the line due to the implementation of ACA.

Title X of the Public Health Service Act has created fundings for the provision of family planning services, which include various reproductive and sexual health services including contraception. It is very clear that the research demonstrates health disparities that has relation to sexual and reproductive health for women of color and low income with Title X programs have been successful at offering needed services to these populations. This research makes examination services and revenue changes in the Title X program on a regional basis and state by state basis. Additionally, from the research, one major issue that arose is that the significant decrease in a total number of uninsured clients in states that led to the expansion of Medicaid has a link to the findings that there was a revenue decrease in 2013 to 2014.

Conclusions/Findings/Assumption:

Indeed, the authors noted that there was a significant impact of ACA on the Title X services. Initially, people speculated that Title X would automatically lose its importance to the new serves like ACA whose impact was not as huge as illustrated by the article. However, the findings showed that there was a reduction in revenue for all clinics sponsored by Title X with expanding states performing better. Thus, the focus should be put on improving and expanding states to achieve better results when addressing the current reproductive health care. The title X funded clinic has played a significant role in the increasing access to health insurance at a higher rate in non- expansion states and in expansion states. Through the project, there was greater concern from advocates that will experience a projection of increasing revenue from private insurance and Medicaid.

Personal assessment and reflection:

Personally, I think the program was a great help to the vulnerable population in reproductive health care. The article is a great platform to support the current health care policy, especially in reproductive health. For instance, programs like Title X could be merged with services provided in the ACA to enhance the accessibility of large vulnerable population. In addition, the platforms can help in identifying proper methods to administer reproductive health service to in accordance with individual preferences and religious beliefs, especially for contraceptives.

References

Lanese, B. G., & Oglesby, W. H. (2016). The affordable care act and family planning services: the effect of optional Medicaid expansion on safety net programs. Contraception and reproductive medicine, 1(1), 17.