Understanding the ACA Premiums

Obamacare, or formally known as the Affordable Care Act, is a recent healthcare law that will reach its implementation stage in 2014. Healthcare is certainly a fundamental necessity and indispensable to a growing human population. The United States is known for its adequate healthcare, servicing low income people through Medicaid, and the elderly through Medicare. However, recent events have led to a shift in what can possibly negatively impact the healthcare system for the United States.

Obamacare has good intentions in having its purpose be to supply affordable healthcare to everyone within the United States, but certain clauses and modifications have turned it into a dicey and uncertain situation. Not only are the costs piling up, and continue to increase, but the distribution of healthcare services is primarily execute through health insurance coverage. This means that there will be a change in how the healthcare system functions at the core level.

Some acts have been passed to analyze and predict how Obamacare will affect the general American population. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act enacted in 2010, served to investigate the significance of the Affordable Care Act's rules on preventative care. Preventative care as most know is meant to curb costs of healthcare by minimizing or lowering health risks that could become acute and chronic health problems. Some examples are Diabetes Type 2 and heart attacks which can be prevented by following a healthy lifestyle and maintaining a healthy BMI.

Analysis of the insurance tiers will help paint a better picture of how Obamacare will impact healthcare as a whole. Higher premiums, buying and exchanging annual contracts, and competitive pricing can all be a part of Obamacare and can affect how much taxpayers as well as insurance payers pay for health insurance. Understanding the Affordable Care Act Premiums Introduction The Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) is the new healthcare law that is coming into effect right now.

The law contains a number of clauses which are transforming the current health care landscape. One aspect of the plan that is gaining the most publicity currently is the tiering system for health care plans. This has become a major issue and growing dilemma for the White House because many plans of the past did not meet the minimum criteria for the ACA (Kliff, 2013; Mangan, 2013). Such inadequate plans have been cancelled, and replaced by better but more expensive plans, representing a significant increase in out-of-pocket costs for some people.

This paper will examine some of the key details of the ACA, including the different tiers of the plans, in order to shed some light on a continually complex issue. The law is often intricate due to all the compromises and promises made by politicians, furthered by blind desires of the citizens they represent, so it can be difficult to sort it all. (John, 2013) It is important to look at various aspects of the act in order to determine an outcome.

Furthermore, many critics offer harsh judgment of the ACA without providing adequate information. Looking further at the facts and statistics described in Obamacare will help get a rounded look into the pros and cons of such an act. Proponents of the ACA state it will decrease government spending on healthcare overall because of the act's focus on preventative care. Opponents state the premiums will increase with little option to switch or elect a different health plan.

Still the truth of it all lies in implementation, management and use of the act, which has still not been seen. Investigation of the ACA's tiers will provide much needed insight into how the resources under the ACA will be distributed. It will also illuminate how under the act, doctors and hospitals will treat their patients with healthcare being standardized. Countries like Canada with universal healthcare often have long waitlists just to see certain doctors because more people are insured.

Literature Review The topic of the ACA can be difficult to follow and requires research to see what the act will do and what its true purpose is. This review of literature focuses on a clear explanation of the four tier system, a clear understanding of the term subsidies, who will be affected by ACA, and understanding the risk involved within the ACA. The literature was guided by the following research questions: 1. Explaining the four Tier system Bronze, Gold, Silver and Platinum 2. What are Subsidies? 3. Is the ACA for everyone? 4.

What are the risks to the ACA? Explaining the Four Tier system Bronze, Gold, Silver and Platinum. There are a number of key facts that need to be understood, and at times they require some critical reading. For example, when Clara Ritger (2013) claims that "For the vast majority of Americans, premium prices will be higher in the individual exchange that what they're currently paying for employer-sponsored premiums," this is a half-truth. If a person is an employer-sponsored plan, he or she will not need to use the insurance exchange.

Only 5% of Americans get their insurance privately, and most only do so on a temporary basis (Kliff, 2013). The context relating what Ritger said must be applied to the overall aspect of the health plan in comparison to other health plans. Most health insurance has rising premiums. In fact, people who have employer sponsored health insurance have annually increasing premiums to help employers keep up with the costs of providing for them health insurance. So one has to examine the sources critically in order to fully grasp the whole picture.

As some like Ritger (2013) have said, critics of the ACA are not particularly insightful despite masquerading as such. As Folger (2013) notes, the new insurance tiers reflect specific features of the policies, so that a number of similar but slightly different policies will compete in each category. These are the bronze, silver, gold and platinum categories. There are a number of factors that determine where a plan fits with these tiers, including the features of the plan, the premium, the deductible, the copayment and more.

As Folger (2013) notes, the actuarial value of the plan is the basis on which it is categorized into the tiers, and this reflects the average percentage of health care expenses that will be paid by the plan. The website Obamacare Facts (2013) notes that the split of payer is 60% for the insurance company with bronze, 70% with silver, 80% with gold and 90% with platinum (Baker, 2013).

The plans are offered on a competitive basis, which has always been the case, but now there are insurance exchanges that have been set up in order to facilitate easy transfer of information to consumers (Obamacare Facts, 2013). Price comparisons, for example, are available on the website, allowing for consumers to compare similar plans to one another (Obamacare.