Obamacare (the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act-PPACA) is a United States federal statue signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010; it represents the most significant regulatory overhaul of the U. S. healthcare system since the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. There are many things that make Obamacare good and bad for this country as a whole. The debate: will it last or will it benefit the U. S. for the future?
Obamacare is the unofficial name for “The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act”; it was enacted with the goals of increasing the quality and affordability of health insurance, lowering the uninsured rate by expanding public and private insurance coverage, and reducing the costs of healthcare for individuals and the government; it introduced a number of different stuff- including mandates, subsidies, and insurance exchanges- meant to increase coverage and affordability.
Obamacare offers a number of new benefits, rights and protections, including provisions that let young adults stay on their parents plan until 26; stop insurance companies from dropping you when you’re sick or if you make an honest mistake on your application, prevent against gender discrimination, stop insurance companies from making unjustified rate hikes, do away with life-time and annual limits, give you the right to a rapid appeal of insurance company decisions, expand coverage to tens of millions, subsidize health insurance costs, and require all insurers to cover people with pre-existing conditions.
Obamacare also include the requirement that all non-grandfathered health insurance plans cover preventive services and provide new Essential Health Benefits; it doesn’t regulate your health care, it regulates health insurance and some of the worst practices of the for-profit health care industry. There are some positive things in the Affordable Care Act have to offer; According to obamacarefacts. com, “Over 100 million Americans have already benefited from the new health care law.
These include more than 105 million people who accessed critical preventive services for free that had previously been subject to out-of-pocket costs, billions of dollars saved for senior citizens from the gradual closing of the Medicare Part D “Donut Hole”, billions saved from new accountability measures for insurance companies, and much more. ” Obamacare is improving existing healthcare facilities and increasing employment among the health care workforce.
The law has funded 190 construction and renovation projects at health centers, and will support over 485 new construction and renovation projects at health centers with 245 completely new centers in the next two years… that’s insane (These projects are estimated to serve almost 4 million people; the centers for Medicare and Medicaid services projects that the community health center provision of the law will create nearly 19,000 new jobs, including positions staffing the new facilities)-www. policymic. com! Right now thanks to Obamacare, young adults have insurance.
Without the law, the cost of buying an equivalent health care plan would have risen dramatically even as the younger generation struggles with the effects of the Great Recession. Also, Obamacare will reduce tour federal deficit by $210 billion over the next decade, saving about $1 trillion over its second decade. Because of Obamacare, if you’re among the 85% who have health insurance, you will pay $0 in any tax penalty. If not, starting in January 2014, “Freddie the Freeloader” will pay 1% of his household income and the tax penalty will increase finally to 2. 5% of his income by 2017-communities.washingtontimes. com.
About the young adults/children, they can be under their parent’s insurance up to age 26, like I said earlier. This is important because of how difficult it is for young people to get jobs, especially a job that offers health insurance. People in their 20s and 30s are living at home longer now, due to the recent recession. If a person gets sick and it costs a lot of money, the insurance company can no longer drop them. Companies can’t raise their premiums without state oversight; senior citizens can now get preventative care visits free of charge-guardianlv. com.
There are also negative things about Obamacare. Most of us know that the Affordable Care Act included minimum coverage standards for a reason. As the Heritage Foundation pointed out back in 1989, the underinsured are a big reason why healthcare is so expensive in the United States; they’re a reason why the rest of us pay so much for coverage and services that cost a fraction of the price in many other countries-www. huffingtonpost. com. This law also could affect you personally; it (law) contains at least 20 new taxes totaling $500 billion that will hit medical innovators, health insurance, and even the sale of your home.
Also, most companies will have to provide and pay for expensive government-determined health insurance for their employees or face federal fines. In dealing with Medicare and doctors (physicians), $575 billion in payment reductions to Medicare providers and Medicare Advantage Plans will cause more and more physicians to stop seeing Medicare patients, exacerbating access problems. The president promised premiums would be $2,500 lower by this year; Hospitals, Doctors, Businesses and Consumers all expect their taxes and health costs to rise under Obamacare.
Value-based payments, quality reporting requirements, and government comparative-effectiveness boards will dictate how doctors practice medicine. Nearly half of all physicians are seriously considering leaving practice, leading to a serve doctor shortage-www. nationalreview. com. Obamacare is bad for union workers; the law imposes an excise tax on the most expensive health plans, as a way to both discourage high health care spending and raise revenue to finance the law. A lot of the “Cadillac” plans that will be subject to this tax are high-end ones that labor unions have negotiated for their members, starting in 2018.
Access to exchange subsidies is good for union workers, who are more likely to lack access to health care through work currently; this win-win for workers will make it harder for unions to organize workplaces (affiliating with certain unions is what’s on people/unions mind). Losing that advantage of union membership may make workers less keen on joining a union. In conclusion, I think that Obamacare is good for America because with all of the elderly people is getting into accidents; they will be needed of healthcare (Medicare and Medicaid).
With Obamacare in the future, I believe that it will not last because of the rich not being tax heavily like the middle (working) class; so in the future, the government might create laws that tax the rich people heavily and not so much on the middle class. There are many things that make Obamacare good and bad for this country as a whole. The debate: will it be destroyed or will it succeed for the future? To be honest, I really don’t know if Obamacare will succeed for the future.