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America's Affordable Care Act

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Introduction
Dr. Atul Gawande wrote a piece for the New Yorker titled “Now What.” It was published just one short month after President Obama signed into law the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and it addresses a few points of consideration surrounding the controversial law, points that have since compounded into intense debates. For anyone who has glanced at a newspaper or navigated the internet between then and now, it’s impossible to miss; the tension created from the passing of the ACA is palpable. Four years later, the ACA remains a hot topic, especially in political circles.
According the ACA’s official website, the law is meant to provide health security to Americans through health insurance reforms (Medicaid.gov, 2014). It attempts to tackle this lofty goal through a number of changes, including:
• Expanding health insurance coverage,
• Fostering accountability of health insurance companies,
• Lowering healthcare costs
• Not only promoting but guaranteeing more health care options, and finally
• Enhancing the quality of care (Medicaid.gov, 2014).
Has the ACA accomplished these goals? And if not, is it on track to do so? Although the subject is open to a broad array of debatable topics, I will consider three.
Is the ACA Simply a Political War?
Allegations between competing news and media services tend to describe the ACA as nothing more than a political war. But are these assessments fair?
In “Now What,” Dr. Gawande compares the ACA’s beginnings to that of

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