One of the foundations of Barack Obama’s term has been the creation of the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare). Now that President Obama has been reelected, he will continue to push for health care reform in the United States. However, as expected there are both those who support the act and those who want to repeal the act entirely. In this entry, we will attempt to uncover the two sides of the argument.
Shawn: What supporters say
Tristan: What critics say
Overview of Affordable Care Act (ACA):
The ACA was enacted into law on March 23, 2010 as an attempt to decrease the amount of uninsured members in today’s society and to lower the costs of health care. It aimed to reform healthcare to become more accessible to all citizens. The ACA aims to stop denial of care and higher health insurance fees on women and people with preexisting conditions. In June 2012, the ACA was brought to the Supreme Court in an important case called National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius. The ruling on the case ultimately sided for the creation of the ACA, as most of the provisions were upheld, including a requirement that most Americans have to have health care by 2014.
Shawn:
Although some argue against the implementation of the ACA, the ACA will ultimately benefit many citizens in the long run. One of the groups that will benefit are young adults. One of the benefits of the ACA is that young adults can use their parents’ health care plan up until the age of 26. This is a good thing because this allows young adults to not have to get their own health care plan and still be covered by their parents. Before the Affordable Care Act was passed, health care plans and companies could remove young adults from their parents’ plan based on their age, if they were a student, or where they lived. Now, these applications don’t apply, giving students who just graduate out of college and their parents a sense of relief.
Tristan:
While Obama Care may provide students who are covered under their parents health care plan, it leaves those that are not covered by their parents in the dust. College students that have been covered by their college’s health care plan will suffer under the affordable care act. Since most college students are relatively healthy, many colleges provide cheap health insurance plans. The affordable care act changes this by raising the insurance payout cap to at least 500,000 dollars. What does this mean? This means that the Affordable Care Act increases the cost of college healthcare plans by as much as 1,112%! The University of Puget sound had to increase their health care plans from $165 to as much as $2000. This is just one more way that the Affordable Care Act just makes healthcare a little less affordable.
Shawn:
In addition to young adults benefiting from the ACA, members of the lower to middle-class will be aided by the new implementations. Lower income and middle-class families will receive substantial aid, making health care premiums more affordable. Consequently, health care will become a lot more accessible than it was before, decreasing the amount of people who were uninsured. Before, lower income families had trouble obtaining health care. However, because of the ACA, health care has been made accessible to everyone no matter what the person’s socioeconomic class is.
Tristan:
ACA is simply not what it seems. Though it may provide expanded, more universal coverage, who is paying for it and at what costs? If deficit reduction is a true priority then the ACA needs to be repealed, it is simply too costly for the government to provide. Furthermore, in order to fund this law cuts funds to research and development and innovation in the field of medicine and as a result some firms have already cut workers. What the ACA does provide though is expansive coverage that not everyone needs, and it forces those individuals to heft the burden of keeping premiums down for more elderly sickly people. Because coverage will be so expansive and so many people will be covered by it, the quality of healthcare will have to be driven down.
The ACA provides the perfect case of a high risk low reward scenario--which is the exact opposite of what America needs. The ACA is simply too difficult to finance, too unwieldy to implement, and puts far too much strain on health care practitioners. What America needs is a health care system that limits cost and restores consumer choice for patients. We need to develop a system of health care that fosters competition to guarantee low prices. The ACA is not what America needs right now.
Shawn:
The primary goal of the ACA is to make sure everyone in America is healthy, through affordable quality health care. The ACA puts in place a system where everyone has the opportunity to have health care, no matter a person’s gender, socioeconomic class, age, or pre-existing condition. For example, insurance companies no longer have the right to charge higher rates for women because of their gender. No one will be denied coverage if they have a pre-existing condition, such as asthma or diabetes. These are just some ways of how the ACA is changing the former system. Because of these changes, people in the country are already benefiting from the law. The ACA will continue to implement laws that allow everyone an equal chance at obtaining health care because people should not have to worry about being covered or being dropped from their coverage. Supporters of the law agree that the reason the ACA is so important is because everyone is entitled to health care.
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