The Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare, was officially signed into legislation in March 2010. The ACA was a major step in achieving a system of universal healthcare, which essentially means all citizens are provided with healthcare and financial protection. In the 1960’s America introduced the Medicare and Medicaid programs, which helped guarantee some type of medical insurance cover for the very poor (Medicaid) and elderly (Medicare). Even though programs like these assisted in covering the most vulnerable groups of people, many Americans still did not have healthcare insurance. The goal of the ACA reform is to ensure that all Americans are covered by some form of health insurance. The ACA promises healthcare access to
The Affordable Care Act or ACA is a federal statute initiated by President Barack Obama, its intended effects were to supply medical coverage at a low cost to millions of Americans who could not afford access to healthcare. There are a variety of economic and scholarly opinions regarding the ACA’s effect on the healthcare market. Many of these viewpoints have changed over the course of Obama’s presidency as the statute began to affect individuals and the healthcare market.
According to the website Medicaid.gov, the Affordable Care Act would increase the number of people that are covered by Medicaid, and would lower health care costs, and would Guarantee more choice of health in insurance. This is a great idea, but their downfalls in the program like the increase, tax of people, and when “U.S. health care spending, which reached nearly $8,000 per person annually in 2009, has outpaced GDP growth for the past several decades and far exceeds spending in any other country.” (Squires, 2012) also, there are steps that the people who truly need the help must go through to get these programs especially those you fell in coverage gap like “2.6 million people in 18 states are in the "coverage gap." More than
The purpose of the Affordable Care Act is to make health insurance more affordable for those who may not have health insurance or those who do, but have little to no coverage. While a vast majority of Americans had health insurance previously to the enacting of ACA, the new law was for people who did not want to buy it or could not afford insurance (Clark J.,
There are various good intentions of the ACA, including addressing access and expanding coverage, cost and quality indicators, public health matters, workforce issues, and speeding up access to new drugs (Emanuel, 2014). Specific provisions outlined in the ACA such as, states expanding Medicaid under the ACA to everyone who makes less than 138% of the federal poverty level now qualifies for Medicaid. The ACA allows young people to now stay on their parents health insurance plan until age 26. In addition the ACA mandates that pre-existing health concerns cannot exclude someone from being covered by insurance. The ACA also expanded Medicaid in many states, the operating margins among hospitals in Medicaid expansion states “increased from 2.1 percent in 2013 to 3.4 percent in 2014.” Operating margins also increased among hospitals in non-expansion states, however the relative increase was smaller compared to hospitals in expansion states. These ACA
Increasing access to health care ensures everyone to seek medical care without the fear of getting a large medical bill. Currently, there are millions of Americans without health insurance. The ACA implements changes in the system that decreases the burden on low-income families by expanding the Medicaid program. This is done by expanding coverage to a variety of population, even individuals with chronic and pre-existing conditions, which covers the supply-based care. Lowering health care costs while enhancing quality of care. Individuals will have more choices in
Affordable Care Act (ACA), often known as Obamacare, was signed by President Obama in 2010. The goal of the Act is to increase the number of individuals with health insurance to the point where all Americans are insured by providing quality healthcare at an affordable price. Despite its good intent, the ACA is not as perfect as it may appear. In this paper, I will list the main features of the Act, its pros and cons, and how it affects you as an individual and discuss the King vs. Burwell lawsuit.
The Behavioural or Cultural Explanation: places emphasis on the individuals and the consequences of their behaviour, when they choose to eat, drink and live healthily the inequalities will be reduced.
Widening economic inequality in the United States is being accompanied by increasing health care disparity. While the health care system seeks to provide health care as a human right, it fails to do so often worsening the disparities (Dickman, Himmelstein, & Woolhandler, 2017). While health care today has made major strides, there are many people who are still suffering from health care system injustices. Of the people who are still uninsured a majority of them are in the middle-working class or those living in poverty. Poor Americans have less access to health care than wealthy Americans. The life expectancy gap between the rich and poor continues to widen. Health care in poor communities is too often neglected. This issue has been a trend in the United States for many years. In Abraham’s book, Mama might be better off dead these very same inequalities are evident for the Banes family. Because of these inequalities, preventive illness becomes life threatening causing care to then become extensive and even more expensive.
In today’s society, there is still a great struggle with health care disparities and many lives are affected by the lack of this fundamental program in our society. There are millions of people who die each year because they are unable to afford quality healthcare. The debate still continues about healthcare inequalities, what causes this disparity and who are affected by it. Health care is more of a necessity rather than a luxury and even though skeptics may argue to the latter, it only underlines the importance of the need for the wellbeing and care of individuals. There are several factors that could contribute to the lack of health care in the United States which ranges from but not limited to race, gender, socio- economic status, and lack of insurance coverage. The truth is there is a great disproportion between who can really afford quality healthcare as appose to individuals who have it. One would imagine that an employed individual would easily afford quality healthcare but we could be no further from the truth, since one’s economic status is an essential determinant to its affordability.
The Affordable Care Act, in its time, has helped many uninsured Americans to obtain health insurance by giving them guaranteed coverage. About 20 million Americans, based on the statistics from the New York Times’s article titled “Fact Check: Trump’s Critiques of the Affordable Care Act.”, have obtained health insurance through the ACA. Dropping the uninsured rate to 11 percent by 2013 (Qiu 2017). Americans, through the ACA, were able to get health insurance even if they got sick, which inevitably happens to many. This put insurers in a place where they cannot deny coverage to people who have preexisting conditions, or their health history. Other main points that are included in Former President Obama’s Affordable Care Act is that one, it was given as an individual mandate that all U.S. Citizens and legal residents must enroll for qualifying health care or get penalized for not signing up for insurance at all. Making the fact that getting health care is mandatory is a good way to lower the insured rates and save many Americans money when the next unexpected hospital visits or illnesses come up. Another thing is that the ACA has also expanded medicaid to all non-Medicaid eligible individuals that are under the age 65 and making medicaid more federal funded based rather than a state issue. Thus helping those who could not afford
classes are perhaps not as clear as they used to be. But it is just as
Income inequality also causes obesity however; we mostly blame individuals for being obese. Being obese can have a serious impact on mental and physical health. it is an illness that is associated with stereotypes. The biggest one is “if poor people become obese they cannot be not poor”. People in this mentality also exclude the structural and social conditions that cause illnesses such as obesity. Social life affects the health of people, especially the socioeconomic level. How much you earn monthly is a factor how fit you are. The risk of being an obese is lower for the wealthy individuals. Poor people are obese because they have no money to buy healthy food, they have no time to exercise, they have stress that causes them to eat constantly, they lack education, they do not have access to the healthcare, they do not have social support and so on. It is mostly about the income inequality.
In the critical reflection 2, we will be recalling the term health inequality. And, find out the importance of needing a policy to answer the necessity of health disparity. In the first section of the paper, two of the policy solutions will be introduced and will also mention how these policies affect population, and the policy maker. The other section will state the pros and cons of the policies from the writer’s perspective. Finally, the conclusion emphasizes on the significance of answering health disparity by using the policies and how it helps to reduce the inequality.