The Affordable Care Act ( Aca )

Rising health insurance premiums have made healthcare unaffordable in the United States. Health insurance premiums in this country have undergone a steady rise over the past few years while incomes have remained the same. More than 50% of individuals with low incomes holding private insurance in the United States are unable to afford their healthcare costs (Collins, Gunja, Doty & Buetel, 2015). In addition, costs related to healthcare are equally unaffordable to 25% of working-age individuals who hold private health insurance policies (Collins et al., 2015). According to the Kaiser Family Foundation/Health Research and Educational Trust (Kaiser/HRET) survey on employer health benefits, employer-sponsored health insurance plans have also had moderate rises in premiums in 2013 for both individuals and family coverage (Claxton et al., 2013). While

In 1954, Congress passed legislation allowing employers to provide health insurance benefits to employees on a tax-free basis (Sih and Singh 99). This legal provision marked the beginning of the rapidly expanding health care costs still apparent today due to the major incentives provided by the government to obtain employer-based health coverage. The overwhelming popularity of employer-based health insurance has led to a serious market inefficiency resulting from the system of third-party payment. As individuals rely on their insurance companies to pay for their medical expenses, this provides

In 2010 the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare, was signed into act to help reform healthcare in the United States. Before and after the act was effective, many people were concerned with how it would affect our country as a whole and on an individual basis. Many people say that the ACA is helping our country and others are not so sure. The goal of the act is to give millions of uninsured Americans access to quality health care and by also making it more affordable. Although there seems to be many positives from this act, not everyone agrees that it was the greatest idea to obtain optimal health status. As many people know, children are now allowed to stay on their parents insurance until they are twenty-six years old.

The Affordable Care Act was signed into law early spring of 2010. It’s probably the most comprehensive reform we’ve seen in the United States healthcare system within the last forty four years. Although the law was put into effect, the features of the new law took effect in 2014. The Affordable Care Act changed the non insurance group market in the United States, mandates most residents to have health insurance, considerably expand public insurance and subsidize private insurance, while raising revenue from a variety of new taxes. Projecting the impacts of the health care system will be challenging, but related estimates were required for the legislative process, and conducted by the Congressional Budget Office.

On March 23, 2010, the Affordable Care Act which is an Obamacare, is the United States federal statute signed into law by President Barack Obama. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) experienced many challenges, debates, and objections until the Supreme Court rendered a final decision on individual mandate healthcare insurance to uphold the health care law on June 28, 2012. The mandate healthcare insurance for workers by employers’ obligation through a regulated marketplace of health maintenance organizations was proposed by President Bill Clinton proposed a healthcare reform bill in 1993, comparing, healthcare insurance would have required by individuals but not employers were proposed by Republican. In the result, the Clinton plan failed amid an unprecedented barrage of negative advertising funded by politically conservative groups. Republican alternative which was the Health Equity and Access Reform Today Act contained a "universal coverage" requirement with a penalty for noncompliance—an individual mandate—as well as subsidies to be used in a state in 1993.

Healthcare reform has become an important issue with many Americans since the passage of the Patient Protection and the Affordable Care Act in 2010. It took years of fighting and refining the bill before it became law, and it represents the lasting legacy of the Obama administration. The Act will allow millions of Americans who were previously uninsured to gain coverage through expanded Medicaid and Medicare programs or through federal or state insurance exchanges. Although the idea of providing healthcare to those who need it but can’t afford it is a noble one, one major question remains. Who will pay for the increase costs associated with expanding coverage? Health insurance is predicated on the spreading of risk. The young and healthy are used to subsidize the cost associated with the care of the old and unhealthy. Congress attempted to address this by placing within the Affordable Care Act a provision which imposes a “tax” of one percent of taxable income on any American who chose not to purchase insurance coverage with the tax increasing every year up to 2.5% for every year they go without coverage. Despite this provision many young Americans are opting out of health coverage and instead will pay the tax. Younger people are making this choice because the tax they pay will ultimately cost them less than a year’s worth of coverage. Not having the younger population covering the costs of the unhealthy could lead to a “death spiral” because private insurance companies are

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was passed in 2010 under the Obama Administration to make health coverage available to more Americans. According to Thomas Berg, a social researcher and law professor at St. Thomas University, It would have brought greater demand for health services. The increased number of health professions needed to provide those services would have motivated a younger generation to pursue a career in the medical field. The act would have raised the standard of living in America. Unfortunately a clause was added to the ACA in August of 2011 that would mandate the coverage of “Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved contraceptive methods, sterilization procedures, and patient education and counseling for all women with reproductive capacity” be included all insurance policies (Berg). The mandate would not have been enacted until August of 2012, but religious groups came out in opposition immediately when news of the clause was released. The Catholic Church was one of the prominent advocates against the enactment of the mandate as contraceptive and sterilization methods are against their moral teachings. The government was forcing the coverage despite the objections of those wishing to practice their conservative faiths freely. The mandate stands as an intrusion of religious liberties and an attack on personal values.

Gruber’s comments inferred to management’s response to the looming Cadillac tax. Management’s reaction to the excise tax is to increase the co-pays, offering health care packages with less

While initially only meant to affect the rich, which is where the nickname “Cadillac tax” comes from, the Cadillac tax has profound implications for union workers as well. Because unions often negotiate in terms of healthcare benefits instead of wages are already witnessing the effect of this tax on current negotiations. According a survey conducted by Kaiser, 25% of employers expect to pay the tax by 2018 if they did not make any changes to their health plans currently. Since the Cadillac tax will affect the “gold-plated,” or generous health plans that many unions negotiate for their workers, union workers are a prime example of a group that is strongly

According to the insurance industry, the new experience of this sky rocketing deductible health insurance cost. Of course, this raises a lot of questions as to if the health insurance is getting better or declining. According to Harris Interactive, he believes that based on current reports given; there are no signs that employees are allowing the high deductibles to discourage him/her from getting the coverage. Part of that of that decision could be based on employees no having any other options for medical care. Some insurance is always better than not having any at all. The fact that members are still applying for insurance is not the for sure indicator that members are pleased with his/her options available. (Lee, 2005).

The probable impact of the Cadillac tax is causing employers to reassess the health care plans they offer their employees and reconsider their role in providing health care benefits to their employees in the future. Currently, this excise tax is proving to be a catalyst for change. However, regional differences in the cost of healthcare and unrelenting medical inflation is going to make the ability for employers to continually reduce benefit costs in an attempt to avoid the tax extremely

Many employees must designate a health plan through their employer. These days, as HMOs (health maintenance organizations) and managed care plans continue to proliferate, that means a choice between bad and worse. As employees line up in the lunch-room for a process called open enrollment, they may be surprised to learn that managed care rates have gone up — again. The mirage that managed care is cheaper care is finally fading. And, for the first time in years, employees may also have the promise of free choice in medicine in the form of a new method of financing health care. Consumers are already aware of horror stories involving HMOs, but cheap rates persuaded many that managed care is less expensive. Recent

One of the primary goals of the Cadillac tax is to reduce the growing costs of national health care (Lowry 2015). The government is hopeful that implementation of the Cadillac tax will reduce overall health care expenditures and impede the growth of health care costs by encouraging a change in consumer behavior through discouraging the provision and obtainment of overly generous health coverage plans (Herring, 2011). Generally, individuals who are insured spend greater amounts on health care than those who are not as they can consume greater amounts of healthcare with a lesser personal burden. In the case that the insurance provided to an individual is overly generous, it encourages over spending on health care due to the fact that they incur a only a portion of costs of consumption. In this manner, the consumption of an inefficient amount of health care is perpetuated by the provision of overly generous health care coverage. This inefficiency and associated increase in demand for healthcare causes the price of healthcare to rise, which exacerbates the undesirable growth in national health care costs (Gravelle, 2015). The Cadillac tax aims to discourage the provision and obtainment of overly generous health care coverage by employers in an effort to decrease inefficient over-consumption of health care and stagnate the growth in healthcare costs. The intent of the Cadillac tax is to alter consumer behavior to decrease the provision of unnecessarily

Rising health care cost has challenged management leaders to develop new initiatives to reduce costs and increase participation in wellness programs. Employers often shift costs to employees or redesign their benefits system to combat rising health care cost (Larsen and Pomeranz, 2009, p. 29). Dropping health insurance coverage altogether is a form of cost shifting (Blumenthal, 2006, p. 196). This organizational strategy may make receiving employer-sponsored insurance a practice of the past. The management leader philosophy of shifting health care responsibility could have a problematic effect on employees. Some employers feel justified with these measures because health care costs continue to rise and have become a liability for

The Cadillac tax is a popular name for the highly controversial excise tax on applicable high cost employer sponsored-insurance (ESI) coverage imposed under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) (Gravelle, 2015). Great debate ensued following the proposal of this tax, which was initially set to be implemented in 2013, however differences in opinion between the House of Representatives and the Senate culminated in the delay in the implementation of this tax until 2018 (Herring, 2011). It is a “nondeductible 40% excise tax on the value of applicable employer-sponsored health coverage” that exceeds a determined threshold (Lowry, 2015). The tax targets employer sponsored health coverage plans that are considered to be overly generous or have relatively low cost-sharing requirements in an effort to raise revenue to offset the costs of implementing other ACA provisions, as well as encourage a reduction in the growing expenditure and costs of national health care and offset some of the effects of the income tax exclusion for ESI (Lowry, 2015).