Health Care Inflation: A Case Study

There have been many studies performed focusing on the rising costs of health care and some of the findings state that the rising cost of healthcare premiums is a worldwide problem. However, I believe they are higher in the U.S. In 2015, U.S. health care costs were $3.2 trillion. That makes healthcare one of the largest U.S. industries, equaling 17.8 % of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in comparison to the late 1960s; where healthcare costs were only $27 billion, or 5% of the GDP, which averaged $9,990 per person each year. The main reason for the rising cost of healthcare is a combination of government policies and lifestyles changes. Examples included lack of coverage or costly coverage, lack of available coverage for

“Obamacare”, also official known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act or the Affordable Care Act for short was first approved on March 23, 2010. The Obamacare Act would guarantee to help Americans be able to get ahold of a fair, low-cost quality health insurance and reduce American’s spending on their health issues. Even with such a great plan, there were many flaws and hesitance that went towards enforcing this new health care plan. However, Obamacare has tremendously enhanced opportunities in order to receive healthcare for a vast number of Americans, despite its complications.

“The amount people pay for health insurance increased 30 percent from 2001 to 2005, while income for the same period of time only increased 3 percent.” (Source: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation). The rising cost of healthcare is a huge problem in America today. In this paper I will analyze the different issues and causes for the increase in cost.

In 2016 the American population again saw their insurance plans increasing their premiums from 10%-13% across the board. This is much more than expected, and even worse the co-op insurance plans have failed. The government sponsored non-profit plans offering lower rates have not proven sustainability in result of the majority going bankrupt even after receiving 1.2 billion dollars of taxpayer’s money. The Affordable Care Act is already becoming a huge tax expense amongst Americans leading to the U.S. increasing the overall national debt. Starting 2018 all high end health insurance premium plans will come with a 40% excise tax. Also, changes in flexible spending accounts have occurred as over the counter medicines are no longer qualified expenses for flexible spending accounts and health savings accounts. The health care tax deduction threshold account increased to 10% from the previous established 7.5%. All these changes through different avenues account for more reasons we continue to see costs increase through the ObamaCare.

Obamacare refers to an Affordable Care Act (Archambault, 2014) in the U.S healthcare reform law which expands and improves the access to care services and reduces spending via taxes and legislations. The main focus of Obamacare is to provide more Americans with affordable access to health insurance and improve on the health care quality and health insurance in the nation. It regulates the health insurance industry hence reducing healthcare spending in the United Sates. The law features various provisions of the healthcare crisis aspect in the country. The affordable Care Act does many important things such as offering U.S citizens with rights, new benefits, and protectionism in relation to their healthcare. It sets up a health insurance marketplace where Americans can buy federally subsidized and regulated health insurance. Obamacare expands on Medicaid to U.S adults in many of its states. It also improves Medicare for the senior population and those with long-term disabilities. Every year during the annual open enrollment period, U.S citizens can access health insurance coverage using the health insurance market place.

Affordable Care Act also known as Obamacare, is a new reform that was signed by President Obama in March 2010 and major provisions went into effect in January 1st, 2014. Obama’s goal with the ACA was that “the core principle that everybody should have some basic security when it comes to their healthcare.” The ACA’s goal is to extend insurance to more than 30 million American people, by expanding Medicaid and providing federal subsidies to help lower- and middle-income buy private coverages. Another reform that is similar to the ACA is a Single Payer System that is trying to be pushed to fix the problems of the ACA such as eliminating commercial insurance.

Obamacare or Affordable care act (ACA) refers to the healthcare act introduced by President Obama in 2010 and represents one of the significant healthcare reforms since the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. The primary purpose of the reform was to increase the quality and affordability of health insurance, expand the reach of insurance, and reduce the costs of healthcare for both individuals and government.

Purpose of the Policy or Program: ObamaCare, or also known as the Affortable Care Act, is a primarily known United States healthcare reform law that expands and truly aims to improve access to care and spending through the economies regulations and taxes for the countries citizens. The primary and main focus of the Affortable Care Act is to provide assistance for more and more Americans with access to adequate, good, and affordable health insurance, this is where improving the quality not quantity of health care is aimed by the health insurance, and reducing the health care spending within the United States of America. So known, to many Americans, there is a crisis, or even we can say it’s an epidemic in a way where many Americans are

Close (2016) confirms the cost of healthcare to our government is far exceeding what was originally estimated. The costs over the next decade are expected to be close to $1.34 trillion which is about $136 billion over budget. Barillas (2016) finds government agencies are predicting healthcare insurance premiums for employer based coverage will increase up to 60% by the year 2025. It seems the Affordable Care Act and the expectation of assisting with the healthcare crisis has only added more challenges to the rising costs of healthcare. Someone will have to pay for those increased costs through additional taxations or some other regulations which can directly impact the reduction of funds needed to control healthcare costs. Many Americans do understand there are other things contributing to increasing healthcare costs such as unheard of prescription drug prices and high rates of medical inflation. One point is clear, as discussed by Hilgemann (2015); President Obama wasn’t right when he told the American people the Affordable Care Act would lower their premiums up to $2500 per year. People are often blaming healthcare insurance companies for these higher premiums when they may not really understand that these insurers are losing money also. Hilgemann (2015) indicates only about 23% of insurers in the Affordable Care Act exchange

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

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), commonly called Obamacare, or the Affordable Care Act (ACA), is a United States federal statute signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010 (Martin, 2015). It is designed for Americans to have insurance or be penalized with 1% of your income for the beginning of last year and will raise up towards 2.5% by the beginning of 2016. Also, health care reform was created to fix our health care systems since the cost of the systems is increasing every year in price. The goal of ACA is to help out the insured with being provided with quality care through health care organizations. Thus the ACA is intended to prevent the uninsured from catastrophic medical expenses which not only

Healthcare costs in the United States have been rising for several years and show no sign of stopping. In 2008, the United States spent on 2.3 trillion on healthcare, more than three times the $714 billion spent in 1990, and over eight times the $253 billion spent in 19801. Although the large amount of money invested in healthcare does translate to better care for Americans, the worsening economic situation, rising costs, and federal government’s deficit have placed a great strain on the system. This includes private employer-sponsored health insurance coverage and public insurance programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. According to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a private and non-profit healthcare analysis organization, “in 2008, U.S. health care spending was about $7,681 per resident and accounted for 16.2% of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP); this is among the highest of all industrialized countries”1. Concerns for the enormous strain on the financial systems that fund healthcare and the desperate need to provide adequate healthcare for Americans have driven many a President since Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, to seek some type of healthcare reform and universal healthcare for all Americans. President Barack Obama succeeded where many had failed and on March 23, 2010, a national health reform law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was signed into law. On March 31, 2011, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued new rules

More people are enrolling and taking advantage of government subsidies and Medicaid expansion as costs in healthcare rises. At the beginning of March 2015, the projection of ACA cost was at $1.201 trillion spread over 2016 to 2025 (about a decade). This is a drop from what was predicted in January 2015 at $1.35 trillion giving a 7% decrease from April of 2014. All in all, the net amounts include the Marketplace coverage provision, Medicaid growth, tax credits from employers, and Children’s Health Insurance Program. Revenue is also generated from money paid from penalty, and tax elimination. ACA will just get better because of decrease in healthcare costs due to Medicare transformation as Medicare expenses are calculated distinctly in the budget predictions, whereas it contains a greater part of ACA ITSELF. This is good news because the health care costs is the lowest it has been in the last 50 years.

The United States healthcare has got some serious long- term related issues. To begin with, there are millions of people that don’t have insurance and those people that do have it tend pay more for it than they would in other comparable countries. The ACA aims to fix these issues by making affordable insurance available to more Americans.

The implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), popularly known as “Obamacare”, has drastically altered healthcare in America. The goal of this act was to give Americans access to affordable, high quality insurance while simultaneously decreasing overall healthcare spending. The ACA had intended to maximize health care coverage throughout the United States, but this lofty ambition resulted in staggeringly huge financial and human costs.