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The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

Decent Essays

On March 23, 2010, President Barak Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (commonly known as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or “ObamaCare”) into law, and on June 28, 2012, the United States Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the ACA and its different mandates. The Affordable Care Act seeks to lower the cost of health insurance in America while also increasing its quality by using consumer safeguards, regulations, taxes, subsidies, and other reforms. Many observations and predictive outcomes have been made by both those who support and those who oppose the act by considering the economic impact that a greater access to care, cheaper costs for premiums, and certain federal regulations will have. When building an argumentative case for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the first difficulty lies in how to interpret the vast amounts of data. Since there are so many components to the law, it is possible to make a reasonable case with any viewpoint and simply spin certain information and evidences to fit that viewpoint. This paper will attempt to use actual results and quantified data to create an impartial summary of the economic effects of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act so far and also predicts its effects in the foreseeable future. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is a 906-page bill with around 400 words per page. There are many important aspects of the law of which we have yet to see the results, but

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