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The Affordable Care Act (PPACA)

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The Affordable Care Act
Andrea Bastidas
Florida International University

The Affordable Care Act

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), commonly called the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or colloquially Obamacare, is a federal statute signed into law on March 23 2010 (One Hundred Eleventh Congress, 2015). The Act has the unfortunate status of being the subject of of over 54 votes to either undo, amend or curtail the core provisions of the Act (O'Keefe, 2014). The global consulting group McKinsey has described the Act, along with the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act amended (The Act, 2010). According Singhal (2011), “the U.S. health care reform sets in as the largest change in employer-provided health benefits in …show more content…

Provisions to Assist Smaller Businesses and Businesses that Offer Most but Not All Employees Coverage (Federal Register, 2014). The U.S. Treasury Department (2015) states that “around 96 percent of employers that own small businesses and have less than 50 employees are therefore, exempt from the employer responsibility provisions” (U.S. Treasury Department, 2015). In other words, employers are obligated to provide health insurance to full time employees and employers are trying to work around the system by maintaining the complete minimum and having very few employees. This immediately stuck me that opponents of the Act could reduce employment in the United States. More specifically, there is antidotal evidence of businesses cutting hours from employee schedules. By reducing hours, businesses are able to get by the 30-hour-per-week definition of a full-time employee (McVeigh, …show more content…

The only way to be exempted and to be eligible for the tax credit is to purchase health insurance from the market place or obtaining it from your employer. Section 3. No Time Limits on Care (ACA 2010. ‘PART A). Before the Act, many Americans with serious health problems would run out of insurance coverage. Some health insurance companies set limits on the amount of money they would spend on an individual consumer. This has been removed by the Act causing insurance companies to no longer maintain a pre-set dollar limit on the coverage they provide to their customers. From a macro socio-economic policy, I support this principle and its objectives because health insurance companies should help consumers not hurt them financially specially when it involves their

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