The Affordable Care Act
Yolanda Evans
Florida International University
BUL6810: The Legal Environment of Business

The Affordable Care Act
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) or Affordable Care Act (ACA) is a health care reform law that was voted into enactment in March of 2010 (Summary of the Affordable Care Act, 2013). The ACA consists of many different parts of which come from the Affordable Health Care for America Act, the Patient Protection Act various parts of the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act and the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (Affordable Care Act Summary, n.d.). The original goal of the ACA was to cut back on the amount of dollars that was being spent on health care …show more content…

Pending Regulation 1. Grants to Establish Wellness Programs – The hopes of this regulation are to give money to small businesses that establish wellness programs for their employees. They are hoping to be able to give them money or up to 5 years. It has yet to be implemented due to funding and budget issues (Health Reform Implementation Timeline, n.d.). I think this is something that really needs to be worked out. It would motivate companies, especially smaller companies to start or even look into getting a wellness program started for their employees. Wellness programs have benefits for both the employer as well as the employee as they can lower health care costs, improve employee morale and health. In return they have less missed days from work and less injuries (Wellness Programs, 2012). Existing Regulation 2. Medicaid Drug Rebate: This regulation basically looks to stop states from double billing the government for rebates on drugs that they are already receiving payment on through the 340B exemption. It was implemented on January 1, 2010 as it related to Medicaid drug rebate and the extension to Medicaid managed care plans was implemented on March 23, 2010. There have since been additions made on April 22, 2010, August 11, 2010 and September 28, 2010 and once again on January 6, 2011 when the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued another