Advantages and disadvantages of the US healthcare system

In an ideal world, every single person would be able to afford the medical care and attention they need throughout their lifespan. The Affordable Care Act, colloquially called Obamacare, set as its goal eventual universal healthcare coverage. Unfortunately, Obamacare has not promoted the ultimate goal of providing affordable healthcare for all Americans. Mandating healthcare insurance does help reduce disparities in access to affordable and necessary interventions, tests, and treatments. As idealistic as Obamacare is, the policy has not reduced the costs of healthcare but it does represent a step in the right direction towards distinguishing between the profit motive in healthcare insurance and the ethical obligation to create a more caring and egalitarian society.
The Affordable Care Act used mandated insurance coverage as its main policy initiative for several reasons, both fiscal and humanitarian. As Gruber (2012) points out, about 12 million employed Americans were not receiving coverage from their employers and were instead purchasing insurance through the “nongroup market,” which guarantees “much higher” premiums and “much worse” coverage (p. 1). Obamacare also strengthened and improved Medicare and Medicaid, and vastly increased the number of all Americans who were able to access the healthcare system (“Is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) Good for America?” 2015). Obamacare offered a state-sponsored federal healthcare insurance plan in lieu of the inefficient and unethical nongroup market coverage, to help underinsured or uninsured Americans receive affordable coverage. Obamacare also ensured that insurers could not discriminate based on prexisting conditions, another strong reason why mandated insurance is preferable to a more market-driven system as the one in place prior to the ACA.
Opponents of the ACA have made several claims as to the fiscal feasibility of the act. For example, Avik Roy claimed that Obamacare led to insurance rate hikes and budget deficit increases (“Is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) Good for America?” 2015). Alonso-Zaldivar (2016) also claims that per person spending on healthcare has reached an all-time high at over $10,000. Moreover, when healthcare is more affordable, more people will use healthcare services either for prevention or treatment. The main problem with these opposing views is that they are misleading facts; there is no causality between the cost of insurance premiums and/or the amount of budget deficit and Obamacare specifically. The rising cost of healthcare has more to do with cost structuring, insurance price gouging, and profit-driven medical care services than they have to do with the ACA. More people are able to access healthcare preventative or curative services, which is the goal of the ACA. The goal of the ACA or any other healthcare policy should not be to protect the insurance companies and the profit-driven healthcare system.
In fact, if the ACA has led to increasing costs of both insurance premiums and medical care costs, then the ACA did not go far enough and the country needs an addendum to the policy that prevents both insurers and care providers to profit off of people’s illnesses. For costs to be truly driven down, preventative care needs to become more accessible, affordable, and available for more Americans because the costs of emergency care is far greater (Alonso-Zaldivar, 2016). Moreover, the government needs to curb the profit motive in healthcare, limiting the power insurance companies have to manipulate their premiums. The costs of healthcare may also eventually level out in the future and lead to the goal of having a more egalitarian model of healthcare. Healthcare, like education, is a basic need and right that promotes a higher quality of life in the society. For this reason, I advocate for mandated insurance but only when mandated insurance is coupled with sensible policies, laws, and programs that address the root causes of the healthcare crisis.



References

Alonso-Zaldivar, R. (2016). $10,345 per person: US healthcare spending reaches new peak. PBS Newshour. Retrieved online: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/new-peak-us-health-care-spending-10345-per-person/
Gruber, J. (2012). Why the individual mandate is effective and efficient. Daily Beast. Retrieved online: http://www.thedailybeast.com/why-the-individual-mandate-is-effective-and-efficient
“Is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) Good for America?” (2015). ProCon.org. Retrieved online: https://healthcarereform.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=003725