The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act might conjure up notions of individual mandates, health exchanges or Medicaid expansion, but there's much more to the law than its hot-button provisions.
Here are ten lesser known healthcare issues the PPACA addresses, according to a Kaiser Health News report.
Here are ten lesser known healthcare issues the PPACA addresses, according to a Kaiser Health News report.
- Postpartum depression. The PPACA urges the National Institute of Mental Health to conduct a multi-year study on postpartum depression and authorizes several million dollars to do so.
- Abstinence education. Reauthorizes federal funding through 2014 for states to provide abstinence-only sex education programs.
- Power-driven wheelchairs. Changes Medicare payment levels so that only "complex" and "rehabilitative" wheelchairs can be purchased. Other wheelchairs need to be rented.
- Oral healthcare. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will put together a five-year national public education campaign to promote oral health measures.
- Nursing mother privacy breaks. Employers with 50 or more employees are required to provide a private location where nursing mothers "can express breast milk."
- Drug sample transparency. Pharmaceutical manufacturers must submit to HHS the names and addresses of providers who requested drug samples and the amount of the drug given.
- Face-to-face encounters for home health, DME. Medicare beneficiaries need to have a face-to-face encounter with their physician or another qualified individual within six months of an order for home health services or durable medical equipment.
- Diabetes and death certificates. The CDC and HHS are directed to encourage states to adopt news standards for issuing death certificates, including whether the deceased had diabetes.
- Breast cancer awareness. The CDC is instructed to create an education campaign to raise awareness among young women regarding breast cancer and how some may be at high risk because of familial, racial or ethnic factors.
- Assisted suicide. The healthcare law forbids the federal government or organizations receiving federal health funds to discriminate against healthcare providers that won't provide items or services to help in assisted suicide, euthanasia or mercy killing.
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