Let’s face it, the healthcare system in the U.S. is broken. The passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obamacare) in 2010, was designed to “fix” the issues and provide access to health insurance for 30 million uninsured and underinsured Americans. This has been the biggest move in healthcare since establishing Medicare and Medicaid in 1965 (Moncrieff & Lee, 2011). My stance on the ACA is pretty bland, at best. As with most things, there are pros and cons in every situation. The main cons I have with the ACA are the costs associated with funding. Funding for the ACA will be provided by cuts to Medicare, as well as, tax increases (Hall & Lord, 2014). Medicare has been struggling for years with funding, so by cutting roughly $500 …show more content…
When the Affordable Care Act passed in 2010, it required participation by virtually all U.S. citizens (Cooper & Gardner, 2016). The goal was to expand health care to 30 million uninsured or underinsured Americans and lower health care spending. The root cause for the ACA was rising costs of health care costs due to new drugs and pharmaceuticals and technology advancements. The cost of health care is a major factor in the number of Americans without coverage (Popescu, 2015). The passing the ACA into law was intended to drive down these health care costs. Like I mentioned above, there are pros and cons of the law. The pros are improved access to health care, affordable and fair premiums with no lifetime limits, and coverage of preventive costs. This was especially important to lower income families. One con was the way the government planned to fund the ACA (Hall & Lord, 2014). There would be new taxes, aimed specifically at upper-class Americans. Also, the lack of providers and physicians that accepted the marketplace coverage. This forced some people to change their primary care physicians and establish new care. Also, insurance companies were forced to cover sick individuals. This drove up premiums for all individuals to cover those who used the system more frequently. The ACA drew opposition from the American Medical Association as physicians did not want to be Federal employees.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has been a topic of dispute since its introduction and continues to be discussed by politicians in the U.S. and throughout the world even after its passage. The Act has many opponents and is the cause of much controversy nationwide, primarily because it introduces higher healthcare costs for the richest citizens. Nevertheless, the ACA is an important stage in the American healthcare development process as it not only allows more people to receive healthcare services, but will also reduce the deficit. However, not everyone agrees. The policy is controversial in terms of cost vs. benefits, but the benefits ultimately outweigh the costs.
The Affordable Care Act, in its time, has helped many uninsured Americans to obtain health insurance by giving them guaranteed coverage. About 20 million Americans, based on the statistics from the New York Times’s article titled “Fact Check: Trump’s Critiques of the Affordable Care Act.”, have obtained health insurance through the ACA. Dropping the uninsured rate to 11 percent by 2013 (Qiu 2017). Americans, through the ACA, were able to get health insurance even if they got sick, which inevitably happens to many. This put insurers in a place where they cannot deny coverage to people who have preexisting conditions, or their health history. Other main points that are included in Former President Obama’s Affordable Care Act is that one, it was given as an individual mandate that all U.S. Citizens and legal residents must enroll for qualifying health care or get penalized for not signing up for insurance at all. Making the fact that getting health care is mandatory is a good way to lower the insured rates and save many Americans money when the next unexpected hospital visits or illnesses come up. Another thing is that the ACA has also expanded medicaid to all non-Medicaid eligible individuals that are under the age 65 and making medicaid more federal funded based rather than a state issue. Thus helping those who could not afford
I enjoyed your reading post. These are all the positive aspects of the ACA. Access to quality healthcare is important because it saves lives. Though this law has its challenges it's beneficial for US citizens. Case in point Canada's healthcare system . Every citizen has healthcare and it is paid through taxes. This law also helps medical professionals pay loans and gain scholarships. Some people are saying it's unethical due to the bill of rights. They claim that people living in the US only have rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. How can anyone have these three things if they are in poor health?
Some people would be against the act because they are mad that their tax dollars go to it, and they would rather have their tax dollars go to something more useful. America’s medical cost rises twice as fast than the rest of the economy. In a book written by Susan Dudley Gold she states that in 2009 60% of the U.S firms provided some form of health insurance in the economy. In her book she also states that retired personnel receive 29% of health benefits from former employers. WIthout the ACA health insurance is used to help cover the cost of medical bills will rise sharply. The economical impact has been negative since the act was passed by President Obama in 2010 also since the act was passed each year 3% of people
The Affordable Care Act is the new health reform law that was signed into action on March 23, 2010. The Affordable Care Act attempts to reform the healthcare system by providing Americans with affordable health insurance. It helps put individuals, businesses, and families in control of their own healthcare. By the sound of it, it really looks like this is something that will positively impact the lives of Americans, and make it easier for individuals to obtain health insurance. Unfortunately, what many Americans are unaware of is that there are so many underlying issues that make the Affordable Care Act not so affordable. Issues such as penalties and taxes that certainly rack up the cost on individuals, businesses and even hospitals that make it difficult for people and businesses to be in “control” of their health care.
Despite the responsibility of healthcare being a power of the states, the national government created a market for privately owned businesses to provide insurance under an umbrella known as “Obamacare”. Obamacare was primarily comprised of the Affordable Care Act, or AFA. The Affordable Care Act, created by the Obama Administration, was passed in March 2010 under the premise that healthcare should be more available to American citizens. These target citizens being the over 50 million who were uninsured for various reasons before the passing of this legislation. They were able to do this by expanding the affordability through various regulations, taxes, subsidies, and other
The 2010 government Affordable Care Act (ACA) set up a progression of early market reforms 50-state necessities
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010, and on June 28, 2012 the Supreme Court decided to uphold the law.¹ Some of the most notable features that the ACA will provide for individuals are access to healthcare for everyone, new consumer protections such as pre-existing condition coverage, free preventative care, protection against healthcare fraud, small business tax credits, as well as many other features.¹
President Barrack Obama proposed the idea of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or otherwise known as ObamaCare in 2010 according to the American Public Health Association (APHA)(2014). The ACA is intended to provide health insurance to people in the United States who cannot afford it. According to Norton (2014), not very many people actually understand the new Health Care Reform, 64 percent of Americans say that they don’t understand it. Also, 40 percent of those same people said that they don’t know what an insurance deductible is either. I had to do a little research myself and found that Lalli (2013) reports that we the people of the United States will have many benefits from the ACA. The first one is ambulatory patient services. This means that you come in, they will take care of you, and then you can leave. The second benefit is prescription drugs, which means that under the ACA people will be able to afford the medicine that they need. Another benefit is emergency care, which includes visits to the emergency room for reasons such as a stroke. The fourth benefit is mental health services, which provides a limited amount of visits to professional help and will only be billed about 40 dollars for their session. The fifth benefit is hospitalization, which can be very expensive but with the ACA, people will only have to pay 20 percent of the bill. Lalli (2013) continues the list of benefits: the sixth benefit being
The Affordable Care Act (ACA or ObamaCare) was made to help uninsured Americans gain insurance for their families without having to pay too much money out of pocket. After years of debating and perfecting ObamaCare the US government finally decided to let the bill pass. ALTHOUGH OBAMACARE HAS GOOD INTENTIONS; IT IS NOW LEAVING OUR NATION WITH UNTRUSTWORTHY MEDICAL INSURANCE AND FACILITIES, CREATING MORE NATIONAL AND PERSONAL DEBT THAN WAS INTENDED, AND DESTROYING JOBS.
Several new taxes were created in order to pay for the ACA. Also additional taxes were created for people with higher incomes, seeing as they had plenty of money they wouldn’t mind sharing some of the wealth with the rest of the country. But of course they did mind, they didn’t see how this could possibly be fair that they had to give up a larger percentage of their income in order to pay for others health insurance. Another major con for requiring American citizens to have health-insurance is that businesses are cutting employee hours in order to avoid having to pay for employees health-insurance. Of course businesses aren’t going to want to pay for all of their employee’s health-insurance, to avoid this they cut hours. This isn’t helping those people who have those jobs. They need to be able to work full-time and need to be able to have health coverage. This is a major con and doesn’t benefit those at all who don’t have full-time
The purpose of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act or Affordable Care Act (ACA) is to provide more affordable and equitable care to all families and lower the uninsured rate by expanding coverage of insurance while reducing costs. This federal statute was enacted by President Barack Obama on March 23rd, 2010. The Marketplace is where people who are not already insured through the Medicaid, Medicare, or their company insurance can get quotes for health insurance coverage at a lower rate.
Karen I enjoyed reading your post! The affordable care act was established in an attempt to resolve the many issues that the health care system was facing. Many believed that this new law is not in the best interest of the people and will eventually collapse because health care is becoming more expensive to afford (Relman 2013, p.1). Relman (2013) believed that “It expands and improves private insurance coverage, but provides no effective controls of the rising costs and no significant change in the way medical care is delivered” (Relman, 2013, p.1). The government interest is focus on how to make more money and profit. The quality of care given to the patients and the fact that the cost might be too high for patients to pay are not taking
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.
I disagree with the statement that the Affordable Care Act would reduce the cost of health care over time. I think the health care with this system were more costly that it would have been without Affordable Care Act. By examining the rates in 2013 and 2014, the average rate in 2014 was extended by 49 percent. There are some advantage and disadvantage to this Affordable Care Act. Its advantages are an aid to the elderly, young adult coverage (being on your parent’s program until age 26), and making chip (Children’s Health Insurance program) easier for children to get. A disadvantage on this program is that there are new taxes that may influence people directly which are called the employer mandate and the individual mandate. Many Lower wages