Healthcare Reform in the United

¶ … Healthcare Reform in the United States

Why did President Barack Obama push so hard in 2009 to pass legislation -- a bill that was signed into law in March 2010 as the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" -- that offers some reforms for America's healthcare system? What is wrong with the system that needs fixing? This paper looks into those issues -- including the most salient reasons that healthcare reform was launched in 2010 -- and uses valid references to zero in on the issues in terms of what reforms are still needed.

What reforms were needed prior to the new healthcare bill?

The need for healthcare reform was on many minds in the years leading up to 2008; during the U.S. presidential campaign candidate Barack Obama promised that if he was elected to the presidency, he would launch legislation to reform healthcare laws.

The reasons reform was badly needed were outlined in 2009 by Jacqueline Garry Lampert for the U.S. Senate Democratic Policy Committee: a) roughly 14,000 Americans were losing health insurance every day in 2009, due to the downturn in the economy, loss of jobs, high cost of healthcare; b) every hour about 171 Americans were having their home foreclosed because medical bills were prohibitively expensive; c) every minute and a half, another family was filing for bankruptcy "due to medical bills that they cannot pay"; d) in the year 2000, typically a family's insurance through an employer was $6,772, but by 2008, the average family health insurance purchased through an employer was an outrageously high $12,680; e) when people are ill or injured and can't pay for the medical care they need, the cost are "shifted to those who can pay" -- and that increases individual insurance premiums by $410 annually; f) the U.S. loses "as much as $207 billion in lost economic productivity due to the poor health and shorter lifespan of the uninsured" (Lampert, 2009).

In an op-ed piece authored President Obama -- published in the New York Times -- the president alluded to a 2007 survey that showed, "…insurance companies discriminated against more than 12 million American in the previous three years because they had a pre-existing illness or condition" (Obama, 2009). The president also condemned some of the "wild misrepresentations that bear no resemblance to anything that anyone has actually proposed"; he was alluding in part to the absurd smear by some opponents of the legislation that a "death panel" would be set up to decide if older people should live or die.

Some of the reforms resulting from the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (AKA "Affordable Care Act") will not come into play until 2014. But the reforms that are already in place, and helping Americans with healthcare issues include the following: a) approximately 102 million consumers of health insurance no longer have a lifetime limit on their policy (as of March, 2010); b) for those purchasing a health insurance policy on or after Sept. 12, 2010, preventative services like mammograms, colonoscopies, immunizations and pre-natal care are covered and insurance companies can no longer change deductibles, co-payments or co-insurance; c) approximately 4 million small businesses "may be eligible for tax credits" making it easier to give coverage to their employees; d) young adults can stay on their parents health care plan now until they are 26 years of age (that benefits up to 2.4 million young people); e) Americans that are uninsured and that have "preexisting conditions" can as of now get insurance through the "Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Program" (PCIP); f) 46 states are using Affordable Care Act resources to "crack down on unreasonable premium increases" (White House).

There are additional benefits that result from the Affordable Care Act will come into play in 2014, according to the White House. Those include a new competitive insurance marketplace that will be established. In that new marketplace will be state-run health insurance exchanges where "million of Americans and small businesses will be able to purchase affordable coverage" and have the same healthcare choices as "Members of Congress," the White House explains.

As to the federal fiscal benefits from the Affordable Care Act, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports that healthcare reform can reduce the national debt / deficit by $145 billion by 2019 and by $1.2 trillion by the year 2030.

A story in the Washington Post (Singletary, 2011) explains that the GAO (which is the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress) is providing "some much-needed transparency" regarding the impact of the Affordable Care Act. For example, if, contrary to the law, a person is denied coverage, he or she can appeal the decision. The GAO reports that in the four states they investigated, "39% to 59% of appeals filed with insurers in those states resulted in the insurer reversing its coverage denial" (Singletary, 2011). By 2014, insurance companies will no longer be allowed to deny coverage, Singletary reports.