Healthcare Insurance and the ACA

Reply

I do not think that wanting universal healthcare for all citizens is necessarily an issue of being a bleeding heart. There are many good reasons to offer all people access to affordable care, regardless of income status, beyond sympathy. A healthier population is a more productive population. When people are not simply without insurance, but are also concerned about high copays and unexpected fees for tests, they can postpone routine care until their health condition becomes so severe, they have no other recourse but to rely upon expensive secondary or tertiary care, versus primary care.

Even if the case study example Vermont’s Green Mountain Care was problematic in its execution, 60 million individuals before the Affordable Care Act (ACA) were uninsured, versus only 27 million, underlining the positive benefits in providing some sort of assistance for individuals to obtain health insurance, which an improve their health and lessen the need for more intensive, financially burdensome care (1). “Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth” (3 John 1:2).

Reference

1. Stasha, S. 27+ Affordable Care Act statistics and facts. Policy Advice. March 3, 2022.

Accessed June 12, 2022. https://policyadvice.net/insurance/insights/affordable-care-act-statistics/#:~:text=When%20it%20comes%20to%20ACA,some%20form%20of%20cost%20assistance.

Reply 2

It is interesting to note that even before the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Massachusetts attempted far more successfully than Vermont to ensure universal care to all citizens. Although underinsurance is still a problem, overall, the policy has been found to be extremely successful in remedying the problem of underinsurance. In 2006, before Governor Romney signed the act into law, only 86% of all adults in the state under age 64 had insurance, while in 2017, 96% did so (1). Healthcare is recognized as a universal human right in the state of MA, even though it does not use the single payer system. On a state-by-state basis, using single-payer methods of providing healthcare may not be feasible, but the state’s example shows that even before the ACA, states decided it was both necessary and prudent to offer healthcare as fewer and fewer employers were offering the benefit as part of insurance coverage. “He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds” (Psalm 143: 3).