Electronic Health Records - Has the Affordable Care Act, Meaningful Term Paper

Electronic Health Records - Has the Affordable Care Act, Meaningful use and incentives helped Where are we with EHR compliance Meaningful Use - Term Paper Example or Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) have also been implemented to achieve some positive progress in the United States of America with regard to healthcare delivery. These programs and reforms cost the United States government a lot of taxpayer money, sometimes going up to tens or hundreds of billions of dollars. The important question that must be answered with regard to these reforms is whether they are effective and whether they really do lead to better healthcare (Copeland, 2011). Past performance such as in the Medicaid and Medicare indicates that the success rate may be low. The low success rate may be indicated by the fact that these reforms such as Medicaid and Medicare end up being scrapped off due to poor performance. The affordable care act is a health reform legislation that has led to many controversies in the United States. The implementation of the reform is estimated to cost billions of US dollars. The purpose and intention of this act was to ensure that the cost of health insurance was lowered while at the same time improving healthcare to the many people who could not afford health insurance (Schreiber, 2011). It was geared towards reducing the rates of non-coverage and this would be helpful in making sure that healthcare in the United States was equalized for all, poor and rich. The act is still under implementation in the United States and it is estimated to be fully implemented by the year 2020. Reports indicate that the affordable healthcare act has made it possible to minimize the number of uninsured people in the United States from about 18 percent to about 15 percent (Foster, 2010). This is a significant figure considering that it has not been fully implemented yet. However, the pr oblem is with regard to how this act relates to other health reforms such as the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act, the question that must be answered as to how these two acts relate with each other and how they support,