Analysis of The Republicans Fold on Health Care
On November 4, 2008, Barack Obama was elected president of the United States of America. During this year, the United States faced a devastating economic recession. The unemployment rate in America was increasing significantly, so President Barack Obama began to analyze the health care system in place for the citizens of the United States. Two years after President Obama’s election a new form of health care was implemented, as stated in Healthcare Reform in America, “The 2010 health reform legislation, known as the Affordable Care Act (ACA), was the outcome of a push by the Obama administration to pass major healthcare reform legislation” (Kronenfeld, Jennie and Michael Kronenfeld 97). The
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In this instance, The Freedom Caucus rejected to pass the bill which would end the Affordable Care Act. This action by the Freedom Caucus demonstrates how the inner government functions.
In order to repeal the act, “Republicans could afford to lose no more than 22 votes to achieve a majority, and in a statement at the White House Friday, Trump estimated that they were 10 to 15 votes short” (Berman). This occurred, because members of the Freedom Caucus opposed the bill. The chairman of the Appropriations committee, Rodney Frelinghuysen, opposed the bill as well. After the opposition of the bill by such a powerful committee, all hope for the repeal dwindled. This reveals the inner workings of the government by demonstrating how electorally vulnerable members will turn against his or her organization to protect his or her own position of power and how others will join the ban wagon to follow the most influential organizations or individuals within the government. In this situation, the representatives would rather go against a party leader than to risk his or her own reputation and attempt to escalate in the hierarchy of government simultaneously. A political culture can be described as the beliefs, attitudes, and values of how a government should operate. For America, liberty and equality are two fundamental values used to generalize the United States political culture. The situation described in this article is representative of this culture. Many Americans
This written report is appertaining to the book How Congress Works and Why You Should Care, written by Lee H. Hamilton. This book is published by Indiana University Press in Bloomington, IL, it was copyrighted in 2004 by the publisher.
Obama’s Health Care Reform, better known as ObamaCare was signed into law on March 23, 2010. It is officially called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) or Affordable Care Act (ACA). This act is meant to provide affordable, good quality health care to all Americans and to cut health care spending. The ACA has been on ongoing struggle to reform the health care system. Almost 50 million Americans still lack health coverage despite the fact that ObamaCare continues to help provide an increasing amount of Americans with access to affordable, quality health insurance . ObamaCare doesn’t take place until 2014, 2013 is considered one of the most important years in history of ObamaCare.
In 1910, Cannon was Speaker of the House as well as Head of the Rules Committee, giving him incomparable power in the House. However, George Norris, backed by the Progressives in Congress, called for a vote to give the power of electing the Rules Committee to the House, to avoid the monopoly of power. This example, of recognizing power and dispersing it away from one individual, furthered American ideology of avoiding dictatorial rule (Burns, 1988). During the film Charles MacDowell, a newspaperman, states, “The Congress is where we speak, the Congress is where we are. The Congress is where ordinary mortals go about the business of compromise; compromise that gets us through the day” (MacDowell, 1988). This statement is relevant, for me, as it imposes the necessity of compromise in Congress. The way that Mr. MacDowell states the functionality of Congress, makes it apparent that in this country the power truly lies with people of all beliefs. Therefore, to maintain fairness, compromise must ensue. Another statement that challenged my personal belief of how Congress operates, was made by Barbara Fields, a historian, stating “I wonder whether the ideal of democracy lives, in real sense, in our
What is the Affordable Care Act and is it going to succeed or fail? The affordable care act is a law passed by the Obama Administration in 2010. This piece of legislation was passed to make health insurance affordable and accessible for all Americans. A lot of people refer to the affordable care act as Obamacare due to the fact that it was passed when President Obama was in office. The affordable care act was a major milestone for the United States in health care reform. It was the first time the United States passed a law that created a form of universal healthcare.
Recently, many political scientists have argued over whether today’s Congress is centralizing or decentralizing. Centralization allows Congress to act quickly and decisively, but at the expense of the members of Congress and their constituents, while decentralization protects and enhances the interests of individual members and their constituents, but at the expense of its ability to act quickly and decisively. At its birth, Congress was created as a decentralized body, and although it has fluctuated over the years, the Constitution, congressional incentive for reelection, the committee system, and weak central leadership has certainly maintained such a decentralized institution.
President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, into law on March 23rd 2010. Congress had tried for decades to pass health care reform, beginning with President Franklin Roosevelt. “Following President Obama’s inauguration, he used Democrat control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate to enact health care reform legislation, and granted the federal government control of over 16% of our nations economy” (Taylor 3). The law states that every American citizen is mandated to purchase health insurance. “If you choose not to obtain Health Insurance by January 2014, you will be penalized $95, or 1% of your income-whichever is greater” (Taylor 5). “The penalty rate for non-compliance will
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (commonly known as Affordable Care Act and/or Obamacare) was signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23rd, 2010. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was enacted to increase the affordability of health insurance by controlling the
To draw a modern-day analogy, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas used a procedural filibuster as a mechanism to shut down the federal government in opposition to President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. While some argue his political intentions were admirable, his self-interested nature drove his use of underhanded political tactics to achieve his ultimate end. In turn, his actions proved destructive for the public good—costing taxpayers millions of dollars. Supporters of Senator Cruz argue that he chose the right course of action. “The loyalties of every Senator are distributed among his party, his state and section, his country and his conscience.” The competing pressures of party interests, public interests, and personal moral responsibility to vote in the interests of his conscience forces the Senator to compartmentalize himself. As a result, Senator Cruz acted upon his ideal of statesmanship by pursuing private interest instead of adhering to party loyalty.
According to a lot of people in the United States, while the ACA may provide an avenue for uninsured Americans to obtain health insurance, there is an underlying agenda that the government has in doing so. Perhaps those that believe this have good reason to feel this way because according to heritage.org, the ACA “imposes intru¬sive federal control of the American health insur¬ance and delivery system” (Hoff, 2010). While there will be an exchange system set up in each state the federal government will be in control of these exchange systems. A lot of people feel that this is just another way for the government to control the people. Only time will tell just how much truth there is to their concerns.
The author compares the specific goals and claims of the Affordable Care Act with the actual experiences in the areas of its implementation. The assessment is made in terms of access, costs and affordability, and quality of care provided. The article uses secondary data to present the perimeters of the assessment. According to the findings, affordable healthcare cost has not been realized and over 37 million Americans are likely to remain uninsured even after full implementation of ACA in 2019. More millions are likely to remain underinsured as profiteering will dominate the culture of healthcare in the US. The author notes that there is need to address the for-profit and bureaucracy in the US healthcare system and concludes by laying out benefits and economic, moral and sociopolitical lessons from ACA within the first five
In 2010 during the term of President Barack Obama something needed to be done due to the rise of healthcare costs and the number of people who were uninsured and unable to pay their healthcare bills (ehealthinsurance 2014). United States spent more on healthcare than any other country but yet was only the 34th in life expectancy. These are some of the many reasons why The Affordable Care Act came about and was signed into a health care law. This landmark law impacted and changed many aspects of the healthcare system, as well as influenced everyone’s healthcare options in the United States. The Affordable Care Act has been just about been one of the most
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
In 2010 President Barack Obama was on his first term as president and the senate was controlled by the democratic party, together they made the most significant transformation to the American healthcare system to date. They enacted the Patient Protection and Affordable Care, which would become universally known as Obamacare. Up until this point in American history, the only two government enacted healthcare reforms were Medicare and Medicaid which provide healthcare insurance to qualifying elderly citizens and low-income families (Dye and Gaddie 650). Citizens could be covered by private insurance companies by either paying for them or being provided health insurance through their employer. However, insurance premiums soared after the financial crisis hit and many employers stopped offering their employees insurance (Obama, whitehouse.gov). According to the
The Congress of the 1950s, known as the “textbook Congress”, is quite different than the Congress of the today. Our Author notes six legislative folkways that were noted by political scientist
Political culture refers to believes, feeling and how people think they should act about government. In the US political culture lays some core ideals and values which are of course not shared by all the Americans. However, the two shared political values in the US by vast majority the regardless of race, creed, national origin are liberty and democracy. In most political debates, there is a tendency to come up with the best framework on how best to achieve these ideals and values assert (Schudson, 271).