HRM FPX 5401 Assessment 1 The Foundation of Law and Ethics in Healthcare HRM-FPX5401 The Legal, Ethical, and Regulatory Environment of Health Care The Foundation of Law and Ethics in Healthcare

This lecture aims to establish the fundamental principles of law and ethics that form the basis of human resource practices at Vila Health. It provides a practical perspective on how the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) influences our organization. By contextualizing the legal, ethical, and regulatory landscape of healthcare, this presentation seeks to equip HR professionals with essential skills for navigating complex moral dilemmas, as outlined by the SHRM Body of Competency Knowledge. This framework acknowledges the critical role HR professionals play in making significant ethical decisions within intricate environments (SHRM, 2018). Newly appointed HR professionals will gain valuable insights into the legal and ethical principles that underpin human resource policies within their organization.

The delivery of healthcare is shaped by various factors, including regulatory environments, industry structures, and payer systems. The regulatory environment establishes standards, controls costs, and safeguards patient rights. The industry structure comprises multiple stakeholders, such as hospitals, private practices, insurance companies, pharmaceutical firms, and technology providers. This structure can lead to reduced competition, increased costs, and a decline in the quality of care. Payer systems, including private insurance and government-funded programs like Medicare and Medicaid, dictate access to care, service coverage, and reimbursement rates, potentially resulting in disparities in care quality based on income or employment status. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), enacted in 2010, was designed to address these challenges by expanding access to health insurance, controlling costs, and enhancing care quality. The ACA serves as a legal framework that tackles systemic issues by broadening coverage and striving to contain costs, collectively shaping the healthcare delivery landscape.

Assessment of the PPACA

The PPACA represents a comprehensive healthcare reform initiative. The law, introduced in March 2010, aimed to achieve three primary objectives (ASPA, 2022):

• Families with incomes at or below 100% of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) can access affordable health insurance, with eligibility extending to those earning up to four times the FPL.
• Although Medicaid expansion is an option for states, not all states provide access to this program for adults whose income falls below a specific threshold, which is set at 138% of the FPL.
• The law promotes medical treatment aimed at reducing healthcare costs.

Healthcare systems face numerous ethical challenges. Pozgar (2020) notes that ethical theories help organize individuals’ thoughts about life and actions, providing a foundation for moral analysis and guiding effective decision-making. The following points will explore commonly discussed ethical theories in relation to the PPACA.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) can be analyzed through various ethical frameworks, each offering distinct insights into its ethical validity. Key perspectives include utilitarianism, deontological ethics, Rawlsian justice, virtue ethics, social contract theory, and principlism. Utilitarianism suggests that the best action is one that maximizes overall happiness or well-being. The ACA’s provisions, such as reducing the number of uninsured Americans, enhancing healthcare access, and ensuring affordability, align with utilitarian principles. Deontological ethics, particularly Kantian ethics, emphasizes fairness, justice, and the respect of individual rights.

Rawlsian justice, as articulated by John Rawls, seeks to arrange social and economic inequalities to benefit the least advantaged members of society. The ACA can be evaluated based on its efforts to improve the health and economic status of disadvantaged groups through Medicaid expansion and subsidies that make health insurance more affordable. Virtue ethics focuses on cultivating good character traits and emphasizes moral virtues such as compassion, empathy, and justice. Social contract theory, proposed by philosophers like Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, assesses the legitimacy of laws and policies based on hypothetical agreements among individuals in society. Principlism, commonly applied in biomedical ethics, encompasses four key principles: autonomy, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and justice. Each ethical theory highlights different aspects of the ACA’s societal impact, aiding in the assessment of its moral and ethical legitimacy in promoting health equity and the well-being of the population.

HRM FPX 5401 Assessment 1 The Foundation of Law and Ethics in Healthcare

The future of public healthcare in the U.S. is anticipated to be influenced by regulatory reforms, technological advancements, and ch