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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...
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…
Titles: The Affordable Care Act: Can It Be Fixed? The Future of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act The Pros and Cons of Obamacare The Effects of Obamacare on American Small Businesses Topics: What are the main arguments for and against Obamacare? How much should Americans pay for healthcare insurance? Why do Americans pay more for their healthcare than consumers in some other countries? Is Obamacare’s individual mandate unconstitutional? Outline: I. Abstract II. Introduction III. Body A. Background and Overview
Affordable Care Act decreased the number of Americans without health insurance by the millions, which was its primary objective. It used three different mechanisms to achieve this goal -- the expansion of Medicaid, the insurance exchanges, and the extension of coverage to young adults up to age 26. These changes have also helped to stem the growth of health care costs, and have delivered greater health care savings throughout the
Affordable Care Act will improve several aspects mentioned in this paper. Cost This act regulates costs that affect the consumer as well as those that affect the industry. The Affordable Care Act seeks to impact various groups, some of which include the companies that make drugs, the hospitals offering care, the companies making medical equipment, insurance both for public health as well as private health and all consumers whether they earn large
References http://kff.org/health-reform/perspective/can-we-learn-from-aca-implementation-and-improve-the-law/Altman, D. (2013). Can We Learn From ACA Implementation and Improve the Law? Retrieved June 8th, 2013, from the Affordable Care Act: From Hiccups to Repeal Most important aspects The author presents three important aspects that are a continuum of the implementation of the ACA from hiccup to repeal. The first scenario is the hiccup scenario where implementation issues are expected in the ACA implementation. This is where glitches are found that
health care industry, in terms of the economics of that business, and how it is structured. The Affordable Care Act was introduced in 2010 in order to address some of the issues that are inherent in the health care industry, namely a high rate of uninsured and skyrocketing costs that were threatening the quality of care for everybody else. The reality is that the ACA has been highly successful.
Do the Pros Outweigh the Cons of the Affordable Care Act? Introduction Before the 1970s, the majority of people held hospital insurance. For instance in the ‘40s, only a tenth of the population actually had private health insurance. Just forty years later, that trend was reversed and a little more than 10% were uninsured—everyone else had bought insurance (Morrisey, 2013). This was a result of the subsidization of care by the government,