The Major Spender Of Tax Dollars

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 American Dream is described by The Free Dictionary as, “An American ideal of a happy and successful life to which all may aspire” ("Definition," 2013, p. 1) yet this can mean different things to different people. To this student it means happiness, prosperity, health, freedom, and the ability to makes choices according to what this student believes in. For other people, the American Dream will mean similar and probably different things. To many Americans the ability to have health care is a part of the American Dream. Obtaining health care insurance and being able to choose the

I will compare the current health care system with the new Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) that became law on March 23, 2010.   The current system, which is being phased out between 2011 and 2018 is increasingly inaccessible to many poor and lower-middle-class people. About 47 million Americans lack health insurance, an increase of more than two million people from 2005 (Rover, 2011) the increasingly complex warfare between insurers and hospitals over who pays the bills is gobbling up a great deal of money and the end result is that the United States pays roughly twice as much per

This paper will include: the current health care expenditures whether spending is too much or not enough, where the nation should add or cut, how the public’s health care needs are paid and provide a forecast for: the future economic needs, why these needs must be addressed, how I envision these needs will be financed and conclusion.

It has been six years since the Affordable Care Act has been implemented into the United States healthcare system. As the pieces and provisions of this monumental federal statute become understood and executed, it is transforming the demand for care. Prior to the ACA, a significant number of Americans were marginalized and unable to obtain coverage. This system was faced increasing healthcare costs, placing greater financial strain to everyday Americans, businesses, and public health insurance systems. The ACA did not only help ensure health coverage for all (almost

The Supreme Court 's favorable ruling on the Affordable Health Care Act allowed for healthcare to be available for many Americans who would otherwise not receive medical benefits. This is because it increases the number of people covered by Medicare/Medicaid, and lowers the cost of insurance through employers. While this idea is good in theory, paying for it is a challenge due to the fact that it will only add to the nation’s already enormous debit of several trillion dollars (Mulvany, 2012). From 2010-2019, the United States is predicted to spend around 400 billion dollars on healthcare. This prediction has prompted lawmakers to reduce spending on Medicare, Medicaid and other welfare programs. The spending cuts will result in less people getting the care they need due to the limited availability of money for care and the increase in the number of beneficiaries receiving

The Affordable Care Act was signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010. The Affordable Care Act also nicknamed as “ObamaCare” faced huge amounts of adversity and challenges on its way to being ratified and upheld by the Supreme Court. Some of these arguments highlight the disadvantages of free social services, the escalating federal deficit, and the altering the healthcare industry’s landscape completely. Healthcare is generally defined as providing for the wellbeing of a personal through medical services. In America, all services come with a price, and healthcare has become an industry that is nearly only about the money and less about the patient. Needless to say, the quality of care that a patient receives is almost

The author compares the specific goals and claims of the Affordable Care Act with the actual experiences in the areas of its implementation. The assessment is made in terms of access, costs and affordability, and quality of care provided. The article uses secondary data to present the perimeters of the assessment. According to the findings, affordable healthcare cost has not been realized and over 37 million Americans are likely to remain uninsured even after full implementation of ACA in 2019. More millions are likely to remain underinsured as profiteering will dominate the culture of healthcare in the US. The author notes that there is need to address the for-profit and bureaucracy in the US healthcare system and concludes by laying out benefits and economic, moral and sociopolitical lessons from ACA within the first five

The Affordable Care Act, signed into law on March 23, 2010, consists of 10 titles which provide Americans with health benefits. Sometimes this is referred to as “Obamacare” or the Patient Protection Act. The basis of the ACA is to assure that Americans can afford quality health insurance, without discrimination, while making purchasing insurance competitive for buyers, while also eliminating the uninsured (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services [HHS], 2015a). This allows the consumer to take control of their health care while making informed choices. By providing affordable health care, this will help reduce wasteful spending that does not improve the quality of health care, which could generate an annual savings of around $140 billion after a five-year period (Sahni, Chigurupati, Kocher, & Cutler, 2015). All American’s were required to be insured either by purchasing private insurance, by their employer, or

On March 23rd of 2010 one of the most highly controversial bills in American history, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), better known as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was passed into law. The Affordable Care Act attempts to reform the healthcare system by providing more Americans with affordable quality health insurance while curbing the growth in healthcare spending in the U.S. The reforms include rights and protections, taxes, tax breaks, rules for insurance companies, education, funding, spending, and the creation of committees to promote prevention, payment reforms, and more. Four years since being passed has the Affordable Care Act begun to make healthcare more affordable to Americans? When it comes to the affordability of health care In the United States, health care has always been a private for-profit industry. The main purpose of the ACA is to make insurance more affordable and expand coverage to uninsured Americans by enacting a number of provisions. This research paper will explore some of these provisions, document their details and decide whether are not they are truly helping make health care more affordable.

Healthcare costs in the United States have been rising for several years and show no sign of stopping. In 2008, the United States spent on 2.3 trillion on healthcare, more than three times the $714 billion spent in 1990, and over eight times the $253 billion spent in 19801. Although the large amount of money invested in healthcare does translate to better care for Americans, the worsening economic situation, rising costs, and federal government’s deficit have placed a great strain on the system. This includes private employer-sponsored health insurance coverage and public insurance programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. According to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, a private and non-profit healthcare analysis organization, “in 2008, U.S. health care spending was about $7,681 per resident and accounted for 16.2% of the nation’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP); this is among the highest of all industrialized countries”1. Concerns for the enormous strain on the financial systems that fund healthcare and the desperate need to provide adequate healthcare for Americans have driven many a President since Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, to seek some type of healthcare reform and universal healthcare for all Americans. President Barack Obama succeeded where many had failed and on March 23, 2010, a national health reform law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was signed into law. On March 31, 2011, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued new rules

In the first quarter of 2016 the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) legislation has lead to 20 million Americans gaining healthcare coverage, and a record low uninsured rate of 8.6 percent (U. S. Department of Health & Human Services [DHHS], 2016). Yet the verdict is out on whether the PPACA has been an improvement or a liability holding back the United States (US) healthcare system’s potential. The legislation was first integrated as a guide to the US healthcare system when it was signed by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010 (Rosenbaum, 2011). It planned to fulfill goals of improving access, affordability, and quality in healthcare (U. S. Department of Health & Human Services [DHHS], 2015). Full implementation of the healthcare reform was established on January 1, 2014, marking the start of individual and employer responsibility provisions, state health insurance exchanges, Medicaid expansions, and individual and small-employer group subsidies (Rosenbaum, 2011). As a whole the PPACA intended to “reframe the financial relationship between Americans and the health-care system to stem the health insurance crisis that has enveloped individuals, families, communities, the health-care system, and the national economy” (Rosenbaum, p. 131, para. 2). While the legislation has not fully

Health care in the United States is driven by a patchwork of services and financing. Americans access health care services in a variety of ways — from private physicians’ offices, to public hospitals, to safety-net providers. This diverse network of health care providers is supported by an equally diverse set of funding streams. The United States spends almost twice as much on health care as any other country, topping $2 trillion each year. (WHO.INT 2000) However, even with overall spending amounting to more than $7,400 per person, millions of individuals cannot access the health care services they need.(Foundation 2009) So when the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (a.k.a the Affordable Care Act or ACA) was passed in the summer

On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), the most comprehensive reform of the U.S. medical system in at least 45 years. The ACA transforms the non-group insurance market in the United States, mandates that most residents have health insurance, significantly expands public insurance and subsidizes private insurance coverage, raises revenues from a variety of new taxes, and reduces and reorganizes spending under the nation’s largest health insurance plan, Medicare. If fully implemented, the ACA promises to lead to a dramatically different health care landscape for the United States in the years to come. Projecting the impacts of such fundamental reform to the health care system is fraught with difficulty. But such projections were required for the legislative process, and were delivered by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). CBO projected that the ACA would increase health insurance coverage by 32 million people and would raise federal government spending by almost $1 trillion over the subsequent decade, but would raise revenues and reduce spending by even more so that the bill overall reduced the federal budget deficit. These CBO projections were central to the legislative debate over the ACA. In this paper, I will discuss the impact of the ACA in more detail, and describe evidence that sheds light upon the accuracy of the projections. I begin by reviewing in broad detail the structure of the ACA.

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.