The Affordable Healthcare Act Is Improved Our Health Care System

President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act on March 23, 2010. This law puts in place widespread health insurance reforms that expanded out over the last 4 years and continues to change the lives of many Americans today. Health care reform has been an extensively debated topic for multiple years, and the ACA is the first effective attempt at passing a law aiming to make health care not only affordable, but accessible for all individuals. The law impacts many Americans including, children, employers, government programs which includes federal and state, health plans and private insurers, health care coverage, health care cost, and the quality of care received. The main goal of the law is to expand health care coverage, broaden Medicaid eligibility, minimize and regulate health care cost, and improve the health care delivery system. In order to improve the health care delivery there have been new consumer protections established and an increase access to affordable care.

Large populations of Americans are uninsured mainly because of the high cost of insurance. Majority of the uninsured are the low-income working families’. The adults represent a higher percentage of the uninsured than children. Before the law, you could be denied coverage or treatment because you had been sick in the past, be dropped mid-treatment for making a simple mistake on your application, hence, the Affordable Care Act was implemented into law on March 23, 2010 by President Barrack Obama to make sure that every American irrespective of their status will be insured and have full access to proper health care benefits, rights and protection(1). To understand the

No one plans to have oneself or a family member diagnosed with a chronic disease or to be involved in a debilitating accident. Unfortunately, these situations are all too familiar and can happen every day. Having health insurance when these life changing events occur can provide a person or family

The Affordable Care Act has made many positive changes for uninsured and underinsured citizens. With the addition of a program called Health Insurance Marketplace, it is now possible for uninsured people in every state to purchase private insurance plans, those making under 400% or less of the Federal Poverty Level will be able to have tax credits making insurance more affordable (Lathrop & Hodnicki, 2014). Insurance companies are no longer allowed to cancel a policy or raise rates when a client gets sick. Insurance companies cannot refuse coverage to individuals with preexisting conditions such as cancer (“Quality Improvement,” 2015). Insurance companies now must cover preventive care and screenings allowing diseases like cancer to be caught early (“Quality Improvement,” 2015). Research has shown that through health screenings

Most people do not know how the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will affect them because the main groups of people that are affected are the uninsured population and vulnerable population. The number of vulnerable populations is increasing and if the establishment of policies and programs fail to improve the health of this population, then it will be extremely difficult to contain the cost of care in the United States (Knickman & Kovner, 2015). The goals of the ACA are to significantly

The Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare or ACA, is the health reform law enacted in 2010 by Congress. The official name of this reform is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Many provisions of the law are already in effect and the rest are going to continue to develop until 2022. After a year of intense political wrangling, the health reform initiative was passed by Congress. Even though it falls short of providing universal coverage, it is unlike the Clinton proposal. The Affordable Care Act was intended to expand US citizens’ and legal residents’ access to health insurance coverage, control future costs, and improve the functioning of the healthcare delivery system. It improves access to care and balances spending through regulations and taxes. Healthcare has always been a crisis in the US and the Affordable Care Act contains hundreds of different provisions that address these aspects. The Affordable Care Act increases the quality of health insurance at an affordable price so all Americans can have access to it. In exchange, most people who can afford to obtain health coverage must by 2014 or pay a per month fee. The ACA offers Americans a number of new benefits. It sets up a Health Insurance Marketplace where we can purchase federally regulated and subsidized Health Insurance during open enrollment. It expands Medicaid to all adults in many states, as well as improving Medicare for seniors and those with long term disabilities. Obamacare expands

The affordable care act thought it would fix all the American problems of not having health insurance, but it did not fix them all. A huge advantage of Obama care was allowing young adults to stay on their parents insurance until they were 26 years old. I personally am grateful for this one because there is no way I could afford health insurance if it wasn’t for my mothers insurance. They also expanded Medicaid to millions of people by creating the market place. The affordable care act was supposed to make the overall healthcare costs lower and more affordable. In 2015 the cost of services increased 0.5 percent, which is reported less then typical years, which were approximately 3 to 4 percent. Another major advantage of the affordable care act is that they required all insurance plans to cover you for mental health, addition, chronic diseases, preventative and wellness visits, maternity and newborn, services and devices, lab tests, pediatric care, prescription drugs, outpatient care, emergency room care, and lately hospitalization. These ten are very important for the quality care for the overall health of a patient.

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.

Health insurances have changed which enhances coverage and access to Americans. According to a 2015 survey, “More than 16 million people have gained health insurance because of Obama Care, leading to a 35 percent decline in the uninsured rate. The 16.4 million total includes 14.1 million adults and 2.3 million aged 19-25 who were able to stay on their parents ' plans and get insurance under the law”(Sullivan, 2015). The Affordable Care Act has ended pre-existing condition exclusions for children, where all health plans are no longer allowed to limit or deny benefits to children under the age of 19 due to a pre-existing condition (Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, 2015). If you are under the age of 26 then you are

The ACA has several important expanded coverage features. Most notably, the new law keeps young adults, 26 years of age and younger, on their parent’s health insurance plan. This particular aspect of the reform allowed up to 3 million young adults to remain covered on their parent’s plan which mean 3 million more people had access to primary care, urgent care, and medication. This was a huge increase from 2010 in which 30% of young Americans between the ages of 19 and 29 had no health insurance coverage. (ObamaCare Young Adults. 2010). Additional features of increased coverage under the ACA was the

Saving money is another benefit of the ACA and allows it to be successful. Many families struggle with how they will afford a medication fulfillment without insurance; prescription drugs are expensive with health insurance, but are even more so without insurance. In the article, “Medication Costs and Adherence of Treatment Before and After the Affordable Care Act: 1999-2015” written by Jae Kennedy, PhD. and Elizabeth Geneva Wood, MHPA., discusses percentages of the population that failed to take medication due to being unable to afford it. The percentage rates changed for each age group, but the overall rates were all centralized between children of age 2 and all the way up to seniors. Dr. Jae Kennedy and Elizabeth Geneva Wood state, with regard to the portion of the population two years and older, “These rates peaked in 2009, at 8.3% of the population and dropped to 5.2% by 2015” (Kennedy and Wood 1). After the ACA was enacted, more people were able to get health insurance and not worry about the cost of medication. The percentage of people not getting medication dropped three percent; that may not sound like to many, but with the hundreds of thousands of people living in the United States and coming from all walks of life; having health insurance cover medication cost is a huge blessing. Seniors especially, have been impacted immensely with the enactment of the ACA. The elderly are now able to afford the essentials for life (i.e. food, utilities, shelter), instead of

This itself in a benefit to America as a whole. With the Affordable Care Act, a greater number of people can receive medical attention to fulfill their needs, when compared to the number of patients that received medical care prior to the act. Dr. Gail R. Wilensky estimates in her New England Journal of Medicine article, “The Shortfalls of “Obamacare”, that the ACA will grant nearly 30 million uninsured people with health coverage through expanded Medicaid, a health care program established by Congress in 1965 to provide medical care to the poor and uninsured, private insurance, or incoming state insurance (Wilensky 2012). Thusly, each of these people can obtain the treatment they need at moderate rates that they used to have an arduous time affording. Moreover, ObamaCare policy for widespread health care has the capacity to save more

The Benefits of the Affordable Care Act to Our People and Our Health Care System

This affects many people because “existing individual- and small-group policies likely didn’t include many of the law’s new minimum requirements, such as preventive care with no cost-sharing. When the policies had to change, premiums were likely to rise” (Sherman, 1). This leads to an increase of “73.4 percent for men and 35.1 percent for women” (Richardson, 1). These percentages are ranged from 30-year-olds to 23-year-olds. Another cause for the increase in health insurances is that the Affordable Health Care Act requires insurance policies to provide 10 health care benefits. Some of these “benefits” include pediatric dental and vision care, maternity care and newborn care, even for policyholders with no children or whose children are adults” (Richardson, 1). This, in total, requires young adults to pay extra for the health care benefits and requirements created by the Affordable Health Care

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.