Coverage and Discussion of \"Obamacare,\"

¶ … coverage and discussion of "Obamacare," the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Discuss how well this legislation addresses issues of effectiveness, efficiency, equity, and other ethical issues.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (just upheld as Constitutional by the Supreme Court last week) is an immensely complex piece of legislation, so much so that it is extremely difficult to assess the entire law as either effective or not, etc. However, I believe, that to the extent possible given the complexity of the bill and the avalanche of vituperative coverage that has accompanied the bill since its introduction, the law overall increases the equity with which healthcare is provided to Americans (Fiscella, 2011).

Among the elements of the law that promote more equitable access to healthcare in the United States is that it forbids insurance companies from charging women more than men for comparable policies simply because of their gender, the requirement that insurance companies pay for the entirety of a number of primary healthcare treatments (such as Pap smears) without any charge to the patient, and new forms of payment that allow individuals with lower incomes be able to meet their financial obligations more easily (Fiscella, 2011).

The efficiency and effectiveness of the new healthcare law are difficult to assess yet, because in many ways they rely more on the next step, which is how state governments institute the law. Given that many Republican governors have voiced vociferous objections to it while many Democratic governors have expressed high levels of enthusiasm, it is hard to imagine that there will not be a wide range of difference in the way in which the law is enacted across the nation (Pande, 2012).