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The Unintended Consequences of the Affordable Health Care Act
Strengths and weaknesses of the Affordable Care Act
Strengths and weaknesses of the Affordable Care Act
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The affordable health-care act, much more commonly known as Obamacare was designed to provide insurance to a large amount of Americans, who would otherwise be uninsured. However it has been a major issue since being created. Americans should have their own choice on health insurance because Obamacare is failing tremendously. The cost, low quality, and the rights are just a few of the main issues with the act. For people who were happy about the law, there was a realization that they would soon be able to have health insurance and could not be rejected due to having pre-existing conditions, leaving them no longer struggling with medical bills if something unexpected were to happen. However the law doesn’t work like that. As stated in (Direct …show more content…
Some think that because there are millions of uninsured people that now have access to affordable healthcare that it 's wonderful for our country (Pros and Cons 11). Few americans believe that the insurance is high quality. With the Affordable Care Act people now have many more private coverage options than they have ever had, also all major medical coverage options must provide minimum essential coverages. (Pros and Cons 11). 15.9 million men, women, and children who fall below one hundred and thirty percent of the poverty level has medicaid expanding to cover them. Small businesses with less than twenty five full-time employees can get their tax credits for more than fifty percent of their employees’ health insurance premium cost. (Pros and Cons 11). Young adults are now allowed to stay on their parents plan until they reach twenty six years old. Obamacare users can also set up their own single payer healthcare system states (Pro/Con Obamacare 6). Whether you love Obamacare or hate it, it is believed that a review of Obamacare is important to many of the three hundred plus million residents of the United States (Pro/Con Obamacare …show more content…
A new survey of healthcare determines the fifty six percent oppose Obamacare, with more than nine in ten believing that there 's a possibility of major negative impacts such as the drop in quality care. (“Will die earlier” 8). Also having nineteen percent believe that Americans will die earlier (“Will die earlier” 8). Fifty three percent of the health insurance policies will suffer due to Obamacare. The law is way over complicated. Quality care has already went down due to the Affordable Care Act. Poorly managed insurance exchanges have come about. With the law being too complex for business it 's hard to deal with. The ones who can not afford the insurance will receive subsides, part of a big expansion of coverage of the sick and poor. (Will it get better 10). Obamacare has dramatically different effects from place to place and from person to person. Having the law raise health cost for some and lower them for others (will it get better 10). Having new taxes allows money to help insure the people needing help with their coverage cost (Pros and Cons 11). The law also allows spending, upfront spending and more regulations is a mandatory thing in order to realize the long term cost. Medicaid has expanded using the Federal and State funding, although not all states have expanded Medicaid. The states that have choose not to expand
One of the most controversial topics in the United States in recent years has been the route which should be undertaken in overhauling the healthcare system for the millions of Americans who are currently uninsured. It is important to note that the goal of the Affordable Care Act is to make healthcare affordable; it provides low-cost, government-subsidized insurance options through the State Health Insurance Marketplace (Amadeo 1). Our current president, Barack Obama, made it one of his goals to bring healthcare to all Americans through the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. This plan, which has been termed “Obamacare”, has come under scrutiny from many Americans, but has also received a large amount of support in turn for a variety of reasons. Some of these reasons include a decrease in insurance discrimination on the basis of health or gender and affordable healthcare coverage for the millions of uninsured. The opposition to this act has cited increased costs and debt accumulation, a reduction in employer healthcare coverage options, as well as a penalization of those already using private healthcare insurance.
The aim of affordable care act (ACA) was to extend health insurance coverage to around 15% of US population who lack it. These include people with no coverage from their employers and don’t have coverage by US health programs like Medicaid (Retrieved from, https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/affordable-care-act/). To achieve this, the law required all Americans to have health insurance which is a reason of controversy because, it was inappropriate intrusion of government into the massive health care industry and insult to personal liberty. To make health care more affordable subsidies are offered and the cost of the insurance was supposed to be reduced by bringing younger, healthier people to the health insurance system. This could be controversial, if older, sicker people who need the coverage most enter the market but younger group decline to do so. The insurance pool will be unbalanced and the cost of coverage will rise correspondingly.
The Affordable Care Act or “Obamacare” was designed to assure that all Americans regardless of health status have access to affordable health insurance. The Affordable Car Act was signed into law March 23, 2010. The primary goal of this act was to decrease barriers for obtaining health care coverage and allow Americans to access needed health care services (Affordable Care Act Summary, n.d). After the legislation is fully implemented in 2014, all Americans will be required to have health insurance through their employer, a public program such as Medicaid and/or Medicare or by purchasing insurance through the health insurance marketplace exchange (Affordable Care Act Summary, n.d). I will identify three parts of The Affordable Care Act that I believe are important. First, I will talk about the requirement that insurance companies are no longer able to deny coverage to individuals with pre-existing conditions. Secondly, I will explain why physician payments are being shifted to value over volume. Lastly, I will discuss Medicaid expansion and why some states are not expanding at all.
The individual mandate and the Affordable Care Act, also known as “Obamacare”, is the idea that citizens should be required to have health insurance or otherwise pay a certain penalty. The Affordable Care Act essentially is the ability for all Americans to be able to afford health insurance. “One goal of the ACA, often referred to as the Affordable Care Act…is to bring down the costs of health care and make it available to more people.” (Will the Affordable Care Act improve health care in the United States?). The ACA was signed into law in March 2010 and currently ongoing. Although the Affordable Care Act does potentially have some positive effects to it, like bringing affordable health insurance to uninsured Americans; the Act does also have
On March 23, 2010, President Barrack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) into legislation. The bill was created to provide affordable and effective health care to all Americans. It has since provided tens of millions of uninsured Americans with affordable healthcare (“ObamaCare: Pros and Cons of ObamaCare”). While doing so, an estimated 31 million still remain uncovered as of 2016 (“Not ‘Everybody’ Is Covered Under ACA”). To this day, the health care plan has remained widely criticized and controversial. Many believe the Affordable Care Act has not done its duty and is unconstitutional to force healthcare upon Americans. Some of the people who share these views believe it isn’t the government’s job to provide welfare. They believe healthcare
As part of the Affordable Care Act, beginning this year Medicaid will expand eligibility to include all uninsured individuals under the age of 65 whose incomes fall at or below 138 percent of the Federal Poverty Level, or about $32,500 for a family of four. However, the 2012 Supreme Court ruling that upheld the law also allowed states more flexibility concerning what parts of the ACA they can implement and said that those same states would not lose federal funding for their existing programs. This result would leave the decision to opt out of the law's provision into the hands of state legislators. While twenty-six states have chosen to expand healthcare coverage, twenty-one states have not and four have yet to make a decision. The state of Florida is among those not seeking to expand coverage and that decision alone could cost Florida millions of dollars a year in tax penalties. As conservative and liberal state lawmakers square off into a maelstrom of debate over whether Medicaid should cover more people, thousands of uninsured Floridians will be caught in the crossfire.
In recent years, the number of Americans who are uninsured has reached over 45 million citizens, with millions more who only have the very basic of insurance, effectively under insured. With the growing budget cuts to medicaid and the decreasing amount of employers cutting back on their health insurance options, more and more americans are put into positions with poor health care or no access to it at all. At the heart of the issue stems two roots, one concerning the morality of universal health care and the other concerning the economic effects. Many believe that health care reform at a national level is impossible or impractical, and so for too long now our citizens have stood by as our flawed health-care system has transformed into an unfixable mess. The good that universal healthcare would bring to our nation far outweighs the bad, however, so, sooner rather than later, it is important for us to strive towards a society where all people have access to healthcare.
The healthcare reform debate has been politicized in the United States for many years where there have been deliberate efforts by various stakeholders to ensure that they push for the reforms that are in line with the cost-benefit aspects that they have already envisioned. In this paper, I will attempt to prove that the reforms that have been witnessed in the healthcare in the recent years have not been effective and helpful to the society as a whole. When President Obama came into office, he promised to oversee great reforms in the healthcare which is his government he face much priority in the social policy aspects. The congress managed to pass the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act passed by President Barack Obama is a significant change of the American healthcare system since insurance plans programs like Medicare and Medicaid (“Introduction to”). As a result, “It is also one of the most hotly contested, publicly maligned, and politically divisive pieces of legislation the country has ever seen” (“Introduction to”). The Affordable Care Act should be changed because it grants the government too much control over the citizen’s healthcare or the lack of individual freedom to choose affordable health insurance.
The Affordable Care Act is not perfect. It presents barriers to both legal and illegal immigrants when it comes to obtaining health care and creates conflicts between financial necessity and religious teaching for certain employers. Compromises and amendments to protect these groups would greatly strengthen the law. The law also has suffered from a jolty suffered, seeing less than expected enrollment during the first open enrollment period. However on the whole, the law has done a lot of good in protecting the poor and particularly those with preexisting conditions, who would not be satisfactorily served under other proposals for health care reform.
“From the very beginning…. Obama’s message was not that the law would result in higher premiums, but better coverage. It was that the law would lower premiums, end of story” (Roy). Yet another promise has found itself broken after the ACA came into the sunlight of reality. “His $1 trillion in tax increases [hit] the middle class hard…” Mitt Romney said, “… in the health care system I envision, costs will be brought under control not because a board of bureaucrats decrees it but because everyone- providers, insurers, and patients –has incentives to do it” Unfortunately, that isn’t how it is. The nation is being forced into healthcare or being penalized for not joining the masses, because this plan will only work if there’s enough healthy people paying their newly doubled premiums regularly to help offset the expenses the unhealthy have right of the bat. “Back when Obamacare was being debated in Congress, Democrats claimed that it was right-wing nonsense that premiums would go up under Obamacare” (Roy). It’s now obvious that right-wing was headed in the right direction, and the middle class was
There is an ongoing debate on the topic of how to fix the health care system in America. Some believe that there should be a Single Payer system that ensures all health care costs are covered by the government, and the people that want a Public Option system believe that there should be no government interference with paying for individual’s health care costs. In 1993, President Bill Clinton introduced the Health Security Act. Its goal was to provide universal health care for America. There was a lot of controversy throughout the nation whether this Act was going in the right direction, and in 1994, the Act died. Since then there have been multiple other attempts to fix the health care situation, but those attempts have not succeeded. The Affordable Care Act was passed in the senate on December 24, 2009, and passed in the house on March 21, 2010. President Obama signed it into law on March 23 (Obamacare Facts). This indeed was a step forward to end the debate about health care, and began to establish the middle ground for people in America. In order for America to stay on track to rebuild the health care system, we need to keep going in the same direction and expand our horizons by keeping and adding on to the Affordable Care Act so every citizen is content.
Obamacare is necessary in America because it calls for all citizens to have health insurance. To understand Obamacare, health insurance, in general, must be understood. It can be defined as “coverage for medicine, visits to the doctor or emergency room, hospital stays, and other medical expenses” (health). Every insurance policy is different; different plans call for different coverage, different co-payments, and different treatment options according to Investor Words. However, until the Obamacare law was passed, millions of Americans were uninsured. In summary, Obamacare mandates that all Americans have health insurance while offering the in...
Less than a quarter of uninsured Americans believe the Affordable Care Act is a good idea. According to experts, more than 87 million Americans could lose their current health care plan under the Affordable Care Act. This seems to provide enough evidence that the Affordable Care Act is doing the exact opposite of what Democrats promised it would do. On the other hand, this law includes the largest health care tax cut in history for middle class families, helping to make insurance much more affordable for millions of families. The Affordable Care Act has been widely discussed and debated, but remains widely misunderstood.
Universal health care is medical insurance provided to all the residents of a country by their government. Out of all the major industrial countries, The United States is the only country without a universal health care system. In 2010, President Barack Obama signed a health care reform law making it illegal to be uninsured in America, which is a major step towards it. Universal Health Care should be mandatory in America because it gives everyone an opportunity to receive more equal care, the overall health of the population would increase and current insurance plans are unaffordable for many Americans.