Obama Health Care
In the original House bill in 2009, the Affordable Care Act would have required individuals to buy private insurance, but would also have offered a public option in the health insurance exchanges and mandated employers to provide health insurance. Premiums for the public opinion would have varied by region (Chaikind et al. 2009). Both the public option and the employer mandates were removed from the Senate version of the bill and do not exist in Public Law 11-148 that President Obama signed in March 2010. This was a very grave disappointment to liberal and progressive reformers, who had always hoped for a Medicare-for-all plan of national health insurance, but ended up only with mandates to by private health insurance on the exchanges. In both the House and Senate versions of the bill, Medicaid coverage was extended to 150% of the poverty line and Medicare eligibility lowered to age 55, with subsidies to buy private insurance for those with low incomes who were not on Medicaid (Chaikind et al. 2010). Conservatives, of course, imposed the entire reform and virtually none of the Republicans in Congress voted for it, while those at the state level challenged the individual mandate in the federal courts. Recently, the Supreme Court heard arguments on this issue and may very well overturn the Affordable Care Act either partially or completely.
Although the Affordable Health care reform sounds like it would do better good than harm for Americans the insurance companies are having a hard time with making sure they will not be lose money. Having preventative care covered under each health plan this will hopefully help people remain up-to-date on their preventative care and prevent further illness by catching it earlier than...
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