Affordable Health Care: A Review of the 2010 HealthCare Reform Bill

Large populations of Americans are uninsured mainly because of the high cost of insurance. Majority of the uninsured are the low-income working families’. The adults represent a higher percentage of the uninsured than children. Before the law, you could be denied coverage or treatment because you had been sick in the past, be dropped mid-treatment for making a simple mistake on your application, hence, the Affordable Care Act was implemented into law on March 23, 2010 by President Barrack Obama to make sure that every American irrespective of their status will be insured and have full access to proper health care benefits, rights and protection(1). To understand the

One of the most controversial bill was made a law on March 23, 2010. President Obama signed the bill that passed the Affordable Care Act (ACA), more commonly referred to as Obama Care. “The ACA represents the most sweeping reform since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965”(Shi&Singh, p. 111). The opposition to implementation to ACA should not have come as a surprise and certainly was not implemented as smoothly as intended. It was passed via compromise, thus creating loop holes in a fragile new system in the infancy stage. Such a drastic, yet necessary, reformation in health care came at a time of financial insecurity in a nation that is only a few years out of a recession. Taking on the responsibility

The Affordable Care Act includes changes to Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance, and creates many conflicts and benefits around how it will affect health care in the future. Clearly, all items within the medical reform are connected, so that a positive impact in one area may inversely affect another. The primary change is the extension of health care coverage to the uninsured, but it comes with a cost. Costs include penalties, taxes, reduced medical access, and lower reimbursement rates for physicians and hospitals. The Affordable Care Act is conceived with a good purpose; as a result, everyone will now have access to affordable health care, although, “affordable” is not yet well defined. Health care providers will be able to continue their vocation of providing good care for our society, but in some cases, changes to insurance may still have a poor outcome.

In today’s day and age, American households can all agree that health insurance is not a luxury, but a necessity. Without it, costs of emergency room visits and prescription medicines can be financially devastating. However, in the past many families and individuals have taken the risk of not being insured due to the high cost of the insurance itself. To attempt to reform this unfair system, the Obama administration signed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2010. The law, coined “Obamacare,” has received much opposition due to its expansion government programs and increase in spending. It brings to question how much the government should be involved in an area that for the majority of America’s history, has been

The Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, is an act passed by president Barack Obama on March 23, 2010. This act, which provides affordable health insurance to Americans, was passed for three primary reasons. These reasons are to reduce the number of individuals in the United States who currently are not covered by some form of health insurance, to improve the availability and quality of existing health care programs, and to reduce the cost of health care to individuals and the government (“Patient Protection”, 2014). The Affordable Care Act has been successful in some ways, but ineffective in other ways since it was passed in March of 2010. For example, Obamacare has helped expand Medicaid and has helped those who have Medicare. However, this act has had a negative impact on the uninsured and on insurance premiums. In addition, some small businesses have benefited from this act, while others have had a negative effect. The Affordable Care Act has many pros, but it also has some cons, which is why there are still some changes and ideas that I would like to see implemented in our healthcare system.

The Affordable Care Act passed in 2010 and signed by President Obama on March 23, 2010. The vision was to reform the health-care in America worked and dramatically decreases the number of uninsured individuals. President Barack Obama campaigned aggressively under the phrase’ “Yes We Can”. In the end “Yes he did” get the health-care reform legislation past and set into motion the overall of health insurance decades in the making. Many of the major objectives of the Affordable Care Act were setup to be implemented over time, most of which will be in place by 2016. Until then it is somewhat difficult to determine the true impact of the Affordable Care Act on individuals and their medical care and the financial impact of the costs. As,

More than 45 million Americans are uninsured. Even those that do have health insurance often face financial and other barriers when getting healthcare. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) removes most of these financial barriers (Kocher, Emanuel, & DeParle, 2010). The ACA guarantees access to healthcare and creates new incentives to change clinical practice, but some might be surprised to learn that the financial price tag attached goes beyond healthcare costs and taxes which all Americans will pay for costs

The new health care reform law in America, Obamacare, increases the quality, availability, and affordability of private and public health insurance to 44 million uninsured. It also is working to curb the growth in healthcare spending in the U.S. which has been rising at an unsustainable rate. Obamacare was passed in the senate on December 24, 2009, and passed in the house on March 21, 2010. It was signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010, and upheld in the supreme court on June 28, 2012. The concept behind Obamacare was the individual mandate, which requires that most Americans obtain health insurance by the end of 2014 or they will have to pay a tax penalty. This concept was first brought about by The Heritage Foundation as an alternative for the single-payer initiative, “Medicare”. This reform wasn’t proposed or expanded until it was implemented in Massachusetts by Governor Romney. During the 2008 elections, healthcare was a booming subject for the Democratic party.

The Affordable Care Act, also called the ACA or Obamacare, is a health care reform law in America. The Affordable Care Act is a long, complex piece of legislation that attempts to reform the healthcare system by providing more Americans with affordable quality health insurance and by curbing the growth in healthcare spending. The law includes new benefits, rights, and protections, rules for Insurance Companies, taxes, tax breaks, funding, spending, and the creation of committees, education, new job creation, and more. The ACA includes 10 titles that address reform the U.S. healthcare system. Some of the provisions include eliminating lifetime and unreasonable annual limits on benefits. It mandates that EHB (or essential health benefits) must be included on all new plans. These benefits include ambulatory services, emergency care, hospitalization, maternity and newborn care, prescription drugs, mental health and substance abuse services, rehabilitative services and devices, labs, chronic disease management and oral and vision care for children. The new law prevents individuals from being dropped from their coverage for any reason other than fraud. The ACA requires coverage of preventative services and immunizations and of dependents up to the age of 26 years old. The law also provides assistance for individuals with preexisting conditions. The ACA also caps insurances companies’ non-medical and

In 1965, as part of his Great Society Legislation, President Johnson signed Medicare and Medicaid into law. With these two programs he concluded two decades of congressional debate of the future of health care. In the forty years to follow, the United States of America and its health care industry experienced dramatic changes. Population increased by over one hundred million people (Census Bureau), advances in medical technology supported a growing elderly population, diets and lifestyle habits changed, and health care costs outpaced both per capita GDP and wages. By 2010, America was long overdue for health care reform. That year, President Obama passed the Affordable Care Act (also the ACA or Obamacare), an ambitious plan of over 400 provisions for one of the nation’s most complex and powerful industries—an industry upon which millions of lives depend. The Affordable Care Act of 2010 fails to fully address the fundamental problems with American health care system, but serves a necessary and promising starting point for such comprehensive reform.

There are Currently 32 million people without health insurance in the United States. This means that roughly 83 per cent of citizens have to live day by day hoping they won’t get sick. For this reason, President Obama signed the U.S health reform bill into law. The health reform will make health care more affordable for citizens. Employers with more than 50 employees will be forced to provide coverage for all, or they will have to pay a fine. It will also make health insures more responsible. For example, health insurance carriers are forbidden from placing lifetime dollar limits on policies, from denying coverage to children because of pre-existing conditions, and from canceling policies because someone gets sick. It will also expand

I feel heath care reform was necessary, health care costs affect the economy, the federal budget, and virtually every American’s family’s financial well-being. According to Obama, “In 2008, the United States devoted 16% of the economy to health care, an increase of almost one-quarter since 1998 (when 13% of the economy was spent on health care), yet much of that spending did not translate into better outcomes for patients” (Obama, 2016, p.526). In 2008, 1 in 7 Americans did not have health insurance (Obama, 2016). Clearly something was wrong with the health care system in the United States. The United States spends more than twice as much on health care per person as other developed countries (Teitelbaum & Wilensky, 2015). If you worked for a company that did not provide health insurance, most people went without and used Emergency Rooms for primary care. I live in Massachusetts. Massachusetts was the only state in the country to require anyone over the age of 18 to have health insurance. If you didn’t, you were penalized with a monetary fine. There are many benefits to mandated Health Insurance. One benefit is if you become sick, you don’t have to worry about going bankrupt getting care. Secondly, the cost of health care will come down and finally the federal deficit will come down. The Affordable Care Act seems to be working. According to Obama “The Affordable Care Act had made significant progress toward solving

The health care debate has been a tricky one over the years with legislators ongoing decision on whether rules should be put in place that would even out the playing field between regular folk and health insurance companies. Obtaining affordable health care has been difficult for many and has raised some eyebrows about how these health care companies continue to make billions of dollars a year while people’s health continue to suffer. In 2010, a health care reform, the Affordable Care Act or “Obamacare”, was signed into law which eliminated those obstacles and limitations set forth by the healthcare industry.

Health insurance is an important part of today’s society, and each person is a stockholder. Not only is each person susceptible to sickness and disease, but each working individual holds a part in the public’s health insurance situation. Because of the Affordable Care Act (2010), also referred to as Obamacare, Americans are required to not only be insured, but also face the consequence of paying a fine if one is uninsured. By mandating health insurance for the pubic, an abundance of people in poverty are advised to take advantage of the governmental system that supports people in poverty- Medicaid. As of 2016, 17.6 million Americans who were previously uninsured are now covered. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, “Over 14 million more

U.S. health care reform is currently one of the most heavily discussed topics in health discourse and politics. After former President Clinton’s failed attempt at health care reform in the mid-1990s, the Bush administration showed no serious efforts at achieving universal health coverage for the millions of uninsured Americans. With Barack Obama as the current U.S. President, health care reform is once again a top priority. President Obama has made a promise to “provide affordable, comprehensive, and portable health coverage for all Americans…” by the end of his first term (Barackobama.com). The heated debate between the two major political parties over health care reform revolves around how to pay for it and more importantly, whether it