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Affordable Care Act: Background and Overview
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is the national health care reform law that was signed into effect in 2010. It is also called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act or more commonly, the Health Care Reform law. It is a law that applies to every state, including Maine, and has some elements that will go into effect over the next ten years to increase access to health care and health care coverage options.
The goals of the ACA include:
- Expand health insurance coverage. Through a variety of mechanisms it will expand health insurance coverage to 32 million more Americans by 2019.
- Improve coverage for those with health insurance by creating strong consumer protections and administrative simplification provisions in the health insurance industry.
- Improve access to and quality of care, including by promoting preventive and primary care.
- Control rising health care costs.
The ACA & Maine
The materials below were developed through the support of The Maine Health Access Foundation as well as eleven nonprofits across the state, including MPCA, who are collaborating to disseminate accurate, direct and effective information about how the Affordable Care Act affects people in Maine.
For short, informational videos on how the ACA impacts your practice, visit our YouTube channel. There you will find videos on MaineCare for immigrants, changes to Medicare as well as other key topics.
Below are some handouts that you can download and print out for your staff or patients:
Patient Resources
For Medicare Beneficiaries:
Legal Services for the Elderly
http://www.mainelse.org/health_care_reform/index_html.
For General ACA informational, including children, those under 26, people with insurance and those with special conditions: Call Consumers for Affordable Healthcare: 1-800-965-7476 or visit their Online Health Care Guide (orange menu on the right) for current health care programs and resources.
Provider Resources
Annual Wellness Visit Toolkit
MPCA, Maine Medical Association, MaineHealth, CarePartners and Legal Services for the Elderly have developed a toolkit to help you implement the Medicare Annual Wellness Visit in your practice.
This toolkit includes: FAQs for practices (including who can do the AWV), workflow examples, sample patient letters, as well as tools you can use with your patients. These materials are not proprietary, so please use them widely.
Maine Medical Association: http://www.mainemed.com/healthsystem/index.php
The Maine Medical Association (MMA) has a number of resources dedicated to health reform, including a MMA ACA Overview slide presentation and archived webinar.
Stay tuned as MPCA continues to collaborate with the following non-profits to develop clear and understandable information:
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