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Health Care Act Of 2010

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Obamacare: Change We Need to Believe in 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. What is the purpose of the American health care system, to begin with? The answer may seem obvious—to provide for the health of the American people. This answer is undisputed, in public and political forums, but in practice it is loaded with unseen conditions, and is far more contested that one would think. Should a public health care system provide for the well-being of all Americans,

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