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Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

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In the beginning of the year 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) was passed and enacted legislatively by Congress in order to increase public access to health care at a reduced cost. The ultimate goal of the ACA was create a better overall atmosphere for workplace heath and safety by making healthcare more affordable. However, the passage of the ACA did have some unforeseen consequences in regards to worker compensation. The ACA was passed in order to increase government funding which would cheapen medication costs for the average American worker and thus make more effective healthcare more affordable. For most American workers there is often a “doughnut hole”, or coverage gap in their healthcare plan. This …show more content…

It also hurts the compensation benefits of nearly everyone in the workforce, whether it be those let go or those relegated to a part-time position. So now essentially many individuals in the American workforce were denied a chance at health insurance as well as being relinquished of a full-time job. Thomas Moran brings up an excellent critique of the ACA by connecting the dots from a growing negative trend in the American workforce to its root cause. It is a very difficult problem to tackle and while Moran discovers its source he doesn’t really offer many possible solutions other than saying that the creation of job must mean the creation of full-time jobs that can provide for a typical American family. It is hard to come up with solutions because the ACA was really intended to be beneficial to the American workforce and increase its health and safety overall. Unfortunately it had untended negative effects on the compensations of the American workforce instead. Maybe the ACA could have created a mandate that would have prevented the employers from drastically reducing their workforce in a short period of time, but they could have not possibly foreseen this happening and the damage is likely done by now. It could have been handled well in theory but I’m not sure that would have ever happened

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