Affordable Care Act
Legal Studies 101

Commerce Clause and the Affordable Care Act

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 was signed into law on March 23, 2010 and a number of provisions have already gone into effect and still others are scheduled to be implemented over the next four years (Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation sec. 2). Probably the most controversial provision is the requirement that Americans who chose not to purchase health insurance will be assessed an annual penalty for 'opting-out.' The so-called 'individual mandate' will be phased in over a period of three years, from 2014 to 2016, and individuals or families can 'purchase' the right to live without health insurance using a flat rate or percent income plan. The flat rate plan will increase over the three-year phase-in period and will eventually range from $695 to $2,085 per year. The percent income plan will increase from 1.0% in 2014….

Affordable Healthcare Act (ObamaCare)
The main objective of the federal government is to offer an affordable healthcare services and products to the citizens. Health is one of the development indicators in relation to the condition of the economy. In the process of enhancing the healthcare services within the United States, the government and the congress sought to adopt and implement an effective healthcare plan towards the achievement of the societal goals. This relates to the adoption and implementation of the ObamaCare in 2010. The main goal of the healthcare plan is to offer affordable health insurance for the citizens of the United States thus reduction in the growth of the healthcare spending by the society members. The affordable healthcare plan does not seek to replace the concept of private investment, Medicaid, or Medicare programs by the federal government and various states. The plan focuses on enhancing accessibility to the healthcare programs….

The Affordable Care Act means that health coverage will be required for almost every American and will be partially subsidized. However, it will not change the employer-centric, private-insurer-based system of financing and coverage. Demand for care will increase significantly and rapidly, but the underlying issues that created the need for a safety net in the first place will not be solved in the near future.
Feldstein (2005) argues that if national health insurance is enacted and designed as an efficient in-king subsidy, then it is questionable as to whether in-kind subsidies should be continued. The major in-kind subsidies on the demand side are Medicare, Medicaid, and the tax deductibility of medial expenses in excess of 7.5% of adjusted gross income. According to the new Act, there will not be any abolition of any of these, but there will be reductions to all of them.

Taking a closer look at all the….

Affordable Care Act (ACA) is a new health insurance reform associated with direct advantages besides the minimal drawbacks. One advantage of this reform relates to health care intensity and quality. As a result, the cost of health care services differs according to providers in different geographic locations. Consistency could be achieved, health care quality improved, and costs minimized if providers practice consistent with best practice standards. If this is done, the unnecessary costly care will be reduced. An illustration of unnecessary costs includes the gravely high costs associated with end-of-life care (Praiser, 2012). Mostly, families and patients require expensive diagnostic procedures, tests and treatments, which have at least minimal impact on the outcome of end-of-life problems but divert funds from more worthy issues. In addition, the current system based on a free-for-service gives physicians some financial rewards. Quality review encourages evidence-based care hence offer high health care quality at lower….

Affordable Care Act of 2010
Brief History of this Legislation -- How it Became Law

hen the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was signed into law by President Barack Obama in March, 2010, the legislative process was saturated with tension and heated rhetoric. After a bitter, chaotic period in which legislators attempted to hold "town hall" meetings to explain the benefits of the play -- and organized disruptions at those meetings set a nasty tone -- it squeaked through the U.S. Congress with hardly a vote to spare. It received no votes from Republican members of the House of Representatives and barely made it through the House (219-212), with all 178 Republicans voting "no." Not one Republican in the U.S. Senate supported the ACA; the vote was 60 Democrats to 39 Republicans.

hy was this healthcare legislation so unpopular with conservatives? The answer to that question is many-faceted, and likely boils down to the….

Critics of the ACA highlight several concerns, however, with the way that the law affects their businesses. For the 10,000 or so employers over 50 people who do not offer insurance, the cost per worker increases immediately. For companies just under 50 employees, this cost could even result in delayed expansion -- though arguably if their numbers are that tight they probably shouldn't expand anyway. That said, some surveys indicate that 90% of employers feel their health care costs are going to increase with the law. Those costs will largely be passed onto customers. Other employers have threatened to convert full-time employers to part-time, or otherwise reduce their FTEs (full-time equivalents) in order to lower their burdens under the law. The Congressional Budget Office, a politically-neutral entity -- has estimated that the Act might cost the U.S. economy up to 800,000 jobs by 2020 (House Oversight Committee, 2012). Libertarian think….

Affordable Care Act (ACA)
On March 2010, the U.S. Congress passed the Patient Affordable Care Act (ACA), a portion of legislation intended to redesign the nation's healthcare framework and amplify health protection to a huge number of uninsured Americans. The law incorporates various provisions that endeavor to achieve this objective. It creates access to healthcare insurance coverage through shifting premiums to be based on an individual's health condition and barring persons with pre-existing medical conditions.

Who is newly covered and how is this achieved?

To minimize the unfavorable selection that could emerge because of certain provisions, ACA incorporates different provisions like premium and expense sharing subsidies controlled by means of a Health Benefits Exchange (HBE) and tax fines for individuals who do not buy sufficiently important health protection coverage plans. The ACA incorporates extra provisions to extend health coverage to U.S. inhabitants like the choice for states to increase Medicaid to almost all….

To make matters worse the stagnant economy means that more people are requiring assistance. In most cases, different demographics of consumers are unable to afford health care coverage. This is because of the abusive practices that are used by the insurance industry to maximize their profit margins (i.e. The denial of preexisting conditions). To make matters worse insurance premiums are increasing exponentially in order to keep up with rising costs.
The Affordable Care Act is designed to address these abuses and ensure that the public has the support they need in this area. This is following the basic model of having the federal government establish and regulate the marketplace. While at the same time, the individual must share their responsibility for these costs. This is taking a neutral perspective when dealing with these problems.

However, given the current fiscal challenges facing the federal government; means that there will be added pressures….

Affordable Care Act Impact
Political scandals are often wrought with unintended consequences for unsuspecting political parties. The recent IS scandal is no different in this regard. The interesting aspect regarding the scandal is its timing relative to the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. In short, the IS targeted certain conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status for extra scrutiny at beginning in 2010, according to an inspector general's report released last week. Lois G. Lerner, the agency official who oversees tax-exempt groups, first revealed publicly on May 10 that IS personnel had targeted the groups. The IS has insisted that the effort was a misguided attempt at greater efficiency rather than a partisan endeavor. White House counsel Kathryn uemmler informed senior White House officials including chief of staff Denis McDonough about the likely findings of the IG's report nearly a month ago, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Monday in an….

Affordable Care Act
Instructions: Please answer Part Exam (5 Parts / preparing a written response 2 pages (double spaced/12 times Roman equivalent font size) Case Study: Patient burned a severe accident sustained significant scarring face blindness eye.

Affordable Care Act (ACA)

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is designed to expand healthcare coverage to a wider range of uninsured Americans and to provide more protections for currently insured Americans. It also attempts to keep the costs of healthcare down by expanding the risk pool to include younger, healthy adults to well as by allowing for young people to remain covered by their parents' insurance for a longer period of time. "When the individual mandate is fully phased-in, those who can afford coverage -- which is defined as insurance costing less than 8% of their annual income -- but choose to forgo it will have to pay either $695 or 2.5% of the annual income,….

Affordable Care Act
Constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act: What Would Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson Say?

The cornerstone of the recently-passed Affordable Care Act is the requirement that all Americans must buy some form of health insurance. This is necessary, given the new requirements put upon health insurance companies to cover the uninsured with preexisting conditions, so people cannot simply wait until they are sick to buy health insurance. The constitutional question at stake is if Congress can compel citizens to purchase a 'product' in the form of health insurance from private industry. This hinges upon the Supreme Court's interpretation of the scope of the Commerce Clause. With respect to this clause, advocates of the bill state that Congress has a right to "regulate the insurance industry" to make the ACA effective, "or can do so by using its authority under the clause permitting it 'to make all laws which shall….

But what is the real story of ACA and what are the legitimate complaints against it?

According to a story in the New Republic (Cohn, 2010, p. 1) the Republican Party and Tea Party members have made hay this election season by attacking ACA. The GOP attacks ACA, Cohn writes, because it allegedly "…cut $500 billion from Medicare" and because it takes away the rights of citizens who presently have a healthcare policy from seeing the doctor of their choice. In fact, the ACA "actually strengthens Medicare's guaranteed benefits," says Kaiser's Health News editor Marilyn erber Serafini, quoted by Cohn in the article. The Affordable Care Act makes preventative care "free" and covers "a greater share of seniors' prescription drugs, Serafini explains.

hat about the accusation that what we're really seeing here is a government takeover of health care -- an idea most seniors abhor? At the informational town hall sessions in….

eferences

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? etrieved June 8th, 2013, from the Affordable Care Act: From Hiccups to epeal

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 some people who qualify for subsidies will not get them and some of those who do not qualify will get them. In addition to this, in the hiccup scenario though a number of exchanges will be set up and companies on the exchanges will not be grow to be as big as expected. Therefore in the hiccups scenario, premiums will go high though only slightly and enhanced services will make people not to mind much about the increase in premium….

Affordable Care Act working?," which was written by Margot Sanger-Katz and was published in the New York Times. The article takes a look at whether the Affordable Care Act, which came into effect a year ago, has had the desired impacts. The author breaks down the objectives of the act into different categories: number of uninsured, insurance affordability, health outcomes, online exchanges, the state of the healthcare industry, expansion of Medicare and the overall level of health spending in America.
The article is discussing the Affordable Care Act. Most of the provisions of the Act have now come into place, so the article takes a look at the statistics in an attempt to gauge whether or not the Act has had the desired outcomes, or if it is making progress. The Affordable Care Act is a comprehensive package of policies that affect most aspects of the health care system, especially….

Introduction The Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare, set about reforming the health care system in America so as to enable more people to obtain access to health care. The ACA arrived with a number of strengths and weaknesses. Altogether, the Act affected patients’ access to and quality of health care. It also impacted the cost of health care in the system. This system will discuss the ACA’s strengths and weaknesses while describing its impact on health care in America. It will also provide a discussion of how I would change and improve our current health care system from the standpoint of access, quality and cost.
Strengths and Weaknesses
While the ACA’s biggest supposed strength is the 20 million people who obtained health coverage as a result of the Act, one of the ACA’s main weaknesses is the fact that it has done little to reduce the bureaucratic red tape that….