Health Insurance : The Affordable Care Act

Insurance can be purchased through private companies or the Marketplace. The Marketplace provides “income-based premium subsidies for low and middle income people.”

Health Insurance Marketplaces are virtual spaces run by the federal government or by states, where the customers can see different plans and prices offered by insurance providers.

The Affordable Care Act was passed to provide American’s better access to health insurance coverage. In addition to better access the ACA improved health care quality and lowered health care cost. The ACA reformed health insurance by expanding coverage, holding insurance companies accountable, lowering health care costs, guaranteeing more choices, and enhancing the quality of care. Although some states have not implemented all the benefits of the ACA, most citizens do have access to health insurance. This paper will address some of the general highlights of the ACA, how it impacted healthcare and the nursing practice.

The term “individual mandate,” as a component of the Affordable Care Act, is a mandatory requirement according to which the majority of people in the United States has to have some kind of health insurance. Most specifically, according to the fundamentals of this regulation, any individual who can afford a health insurance policy, but chooses not to do so, will have to pay a fine. Prior to the existence of the individual mandate, health insurance companies had the choice to reject people with health conditions that would potentially incur high costs. Because of this reason, a significant number of people did not have any health coverage. In order to maintain insurance premiums reasonably steady and sustain government cost balanced,

The United States has multiple opportunities for insurance coverage for people. There are many private insurance companies to insure Americans. There are also government assistant agencies such as: Medicare, Medicaid and Children Health Insurance Program (CHIP) (Commonwealth Fund, 2013). Persons must apply and qualify for any government assisted programs for healthcare.

The individual mandate is a tax penalty for those who do not obtain health insurance. This is a highly controversial aspect of the Affordable Care Act that is currently up for debate. Under the latest version of the GOP tax-reform bill, the individual mandate is up for elimination. Eliminating the individual mandate would ultimately cause healthier people to opt out of health care insurance. This would leave only unhealthy people being the ones who purchase health insurance, which in the long run would lead to higher healthcare costs. By ending the mandate premiums would rise and businesses would possibly shift to high-deductible plans or cut coverage entirely.

Obamacare expands Medicaid and created a Health Insurance Marketplace, a universal way to sign up for subsidized health care plans. It makes it easier for low income families to receive benefits from Medicaid and other unsubsidized loans. Over half of uninsured Americans can get free or low cost health insurance, and some can get help on out-of-pocket costs using their state’s Health Insurance Marketplace. Through the Marketplace, though, you can only get certain plans from certain providers, as many of them are unwilling to provide subsidized loans. Protections from Obamacare also ensure that you can’t be dropped from … or denied coverage or treatment for

According to David Nather’s The New Health Care System: Everything You Need to Know, in 2009, 8% of premiums went to cover the uninsured (pg.38). To alleviate that problem, the Affordable Care Act created the individual mandate, which requires everyone to get health insurance. The idea is that the mandate will force healthy people to get insurance, which will then subsidize the sick and the old. If people do not get insurance, then they will pay a fine to the government. If you cannot afford health insurance then you can apply for an exemption. The new decree does not allow insurance companies to deny coverage and they cannot charge you more if you are sick. The law

The Affordable Care Act is a law that was enacted on the 23rd of March 2010. Regardless of the fact that it was put into place in 2010, there are still numerous aspects of the law being debated today. The law has several provisions that are expected to take effect between the year of 2010 and 2020 (Reid, 2012). Among the significant reforms in the law includes a clause prohibiting insurers from refusing people coverage due to some preexisting conditions. In addition, these companies should offer the same price for all clients who are in the same geographical location and are the same age. Another reform was that families that are in the poverty line should receive federal subsidies if they decide to buy insurance through an exchange. The government also created minimum standards for insurance policies. The government also established health insurance exchanges as platforms for comparison of different policies. The Affordable Care Act also has an individual mandate

Obamacare is an unofficial name for the Patient Protection and ACA (Affordable Care Act) which was signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2010. The White House announced that in the first month, more than 100,000 Americans successfully enrolled in new insurance plans (The New America). That’s not even close to a quarter of the United States population. There have been problems with the website when it crashed. This prevented many Americans from completing the enrollment process. Which put a big hurt on the AC. But there is no question that there is a real demand for quality, affordable health insurance. In the first month, nearly a million people successfully completed an application for themselves or their families. An estimated amount 396,000 citizens have the ability to gain access to Medicaid under the Affordable Care

Since the law was signed in 2010, the Affordable Care Act is a working progress, it continues to changes to help improve individual’s needs. When the Marketplace, first launch there were some technical difficulties. The marketplace website was created so consumers can shop for affordable insurances that meets their needs. Now, despite some of the difficulties and the negativity from the media, the Affordable Care Act has many constructive effects. Obama care created the patient’s bill of rights. What many Americans fail to realize is, why many individuals were without health insurance. Before the law was created, insurances were more like a business. They would drop people without notice, raise premiums rates, or simply deny

The Affordable Care Act is considered one of the most important legislations related to health care reform to ever been enacted in the history of the United States (Cannan, 2013). The ACA was developed in order to give consumers control of their health care and to provide them with a means of power. The intention was for Americans to have stability and flexibility when it came to making personal healthcare decisions. Many citizens have been able to opportunity obtain affordable healthcare coverage with this reform that they did not have before. Programs have been developed to assist those with pre-existing conditions that may have previously been unable to obtain coverage. Options for young adults under the age of 30 who may not have had coverage have been developed under other health coverage program enacted. The Affordable Care Act has also offered protection for those that received arbitrary withdrawals of insurance coverage. Many Americans have chosen to opt out of healthcare coverage altogether in the past, but this is no longer an option without a penalty. There is a fine that is required to be paid when filing annual income taxes. Unfortunately, some Americans are uninsured and do not have the means to pay for health insurance, and are forced to pay the fine. This has been a growing issue in America as many families cannot afford much more beyond the daily necessities. Therefore, any serious injury or illness can quickly diminish any savings or cause debt to those

The affordable care act truly contains over a thousand pages of reforms to the insurance and health care industries in order to combat rising health care costs that are manifesting all around the country. Throughout the developing statistics pertaining to the American that did not receive health care insurance, it was stated that as of 2013 there were close to around 44 million Americans who went without health insurance, this can be a little less than sixteen percent of the United States population (Cite). So let’s take a look at the majority of those individuals that are unisured, they

Accessing health insurance coverage is not exclusively limited to the exchange. Employers who have a large staff are required to provide access to health insurance as part of their employees. There are approximately 80percent of Americans who derive health insurance coverage from their employers (“Obamacare

According to the United States Census Bureau, in 2012 the percentage of people without health insurance was of 15.4 percent. The percentage of people covered by employment health insurance was of 54.9 percent or 170.9 million. The percentage of people covered by Medicare was of 15.7 percent or 48.9 million. The percentage of uninsured children under age 18 was of 8.9 percent or 6.6 million (De Navas-Walt, 30). One of the mandates under the ACA is the individual mandate. This mandate requires that most Americans obtain health insurance by March 31, 2014 (“ObamaCare Individual Mandate", n.d.). Another mandate under the ACA is the employer mandate. Under this mandate, the ACA requires “all businesses with over 50 full time equivalent employees to provide health insurance for their full-time employees” ("ObamaCare Employer Mandate", n.d.) The ACA has also created a health insurance exchange also known as the Marketplace. This Marketplace allows the public to shop and compare different insurance plans side-by-side by guaranteeing the best deal as the prices are regulated by this law. Uninsured Americans will be able to get free or low cost health insurance through the State’s Health Insurance Marketplace and Medicaid has been expanded up to 15.9 million men, women and Children below 138% of the poverty level. ("ObamaCare | Health Insurance Exchange", n.d.).