Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
The impact of the Affordable Care Act on healthcare
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: The impact of the Affordable Care Act on healthcare
North Carolina cannot afford to lose the Affordable Care Act In North Carolina there’s over 499,178 residents receive their coverage with help of Affordable Care Acts subsidies. Many families receive support to cover cost-sharing, such as co-payments. The loss of this combined support will cost each recipient an average of $6,943 in 2019. Medicare recipients benefit from lower prescription drug costs thanks to Affordable Care Act. The cost of elimination of this price protection would cost Medicare recipients an average of $1,013 a month. So a Repeal of the Affordable Care Act would potentially wreak havoc on our state budget. A Repeal would reduce health care for thousands of people in North Carolina. Would cause human and economic
Due to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act signed into law on March 23rd, 2010; health care in the US is presently in a state of much needed transition. As of 2008, 46 Million residents (15% of the population) were uninsured and 60% of residents had coverage from private insurers. 55% of those covered by private insurers received it through their employer and 5% paid for it directly. Federal programs covered 24% of Americans; 13% under Medicare and10% under Medicaid. (Squires, 2010)
The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) supports workers, who have lost the right to their health benefits, so that they can keep their employer-sponsored group health plan in force. The need for continued insurance coverage is necessary when coverage is interrupted due to the loss of a job, reduced working hours, death of the insured employee, divorce or even other circumstances that affect a person’s life. A person who qualifies for the group health benefit is usually expected to pay for that premium. The employer may increase the premium up to 102 percent, which is allowed under the provisions of COBRA. The law applies to all employer-sponsored group plans who have 20 and above employees and urges them to ensure an extension of the health coverage that is temporary (Magill, 2009).
The leadership’s decision not to expand Medicaid leaves between 300,000 and 400,000 South Carolinians without health insurance (South Carolina Medical Association, 2012). The stated intent of the Affordable Care Act, pejoratively dubbed “Obamacare” by its critics, was to put affordable health care within reach of more of the 40 million Americans who lacked health insurance. The law’s grand design included an assumption that states would expand their Medicaid programs, since the federal government would pay 100 percent of the expansion costs through 2016, and 90 percent thereafter. But in demonstrating its traditional mistrust of Washington’s promises, Columbia declined the offer and, in the process, left thousands of low-income workers without the means to obtain health coverage, either because they cannot afford the premiums or because their employers do not provide it. (Advisory Committee, 2013). Ironically, in a state where the median annual income is $44,600, South Carolina’s working poor earn too much money to qualify for Medicaid; however, they would be covered under the ACA model (Hailsmaier and Blasé, 2010).
One of the most controversial topics in the United States in recent years has been the route which should be undertaken in overhauling the healthcare system for the millions of Americans who are currently uninsured. It is important to note that the goal of the Affordable Care Act is to make healthcare affordable; it provides low-cost, government-subsidized insurance options through the State Health Insurance Marketplace (Amadeo 1). Our current president, Barack Obama, made it one of his goals to bring healthcare to all Americans through the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010. This plan, which has been termed “Obamacare”, has come under scrutiny from many Americans, but has also received a large amount of support in turn for a variety of reasons. Some of these reasons include a decrease in insurance discrimination on the basis of health or gender and affordable healthcare coverage for the millions of uninsured. The opposition to this act has cited increased costs and debt accumulation, a reduction in employer healthcare coverage options, as well as a penalization of those already using private healthcare insurance.
There is an ongoing debate on the topic of how to fix the health care system in America. Some believe that there should be a Single Payer system that ensures all health care costs are covered by the government, and the people that want a Public Option system believe that there should be no government interference with paying for individual’s health care costs. In 1993, President Bill Clinton introduced the Health Security Act. Its goal was to provide universal health care for America. There was a lot of controversy throughout the nation whether this Act was going in the right direction, and in 1994, the Act died. Since then there have been multiple other attempts to fix the health care situation, but those attempts have not succeeded. The Affordable Care Act was passed in the senate on December 24, 2009, and passed in the house on March 21, 2010. President Obama signed it into law on March 23 (Obamacare Facts). This indeed was a step forward to end the debate about health care, and began to establish the middle ground for people in America. In order for America to stay on track to rebuild the health care system, we need to keep going in the same direction and expand our horizons by keeping and adding on to the Affordable Care Act so every citizen is content.
Health insurance, too many American citizens, is not an option. However, some citizens find it unnecessary. Working in the health care field, I witness the effects of uninsured patients on medical offices. Too often, I see a “self-pay” patient receive care from their doctor and then fail to pay for it. Altogether, their refusal to pay leaves the office at a loss of money and calls for patients to pay extra in covering for the cost of the care the uninsured patient received. One office visit does not seem like too big of an expense, but multiple patients failing to pay for the care they receive adds up. Imagine the hospital bills that patients fail to pay; health services in a hospital are double, sometimes triple, in price at a hospital. It is unfair that paying patients are responsible for covering these unpaid services. Luckily, the Affordable Care Act was passed on March 23, 2010, otherwise known as Obamacare. Obamacare is necessary in America because it calls for all citizens to be health insured, no worrying about pre-existing conditions, and free benefits for men and women’s health.
The current state of affairs in the development of health policy in the United States is that it is constantly in flux and its implementation is disorganized and inefficient. As was the case with the recently passed Affordable Care Act legislation, political and lobbying interests often intersect in a manner that makes meaningful, most appropriate changes unlikely. The ACA kept in place the fractured nature of American health care and insurance, and appears to have benefited insurance companies by increasing enrollments rather than making the care provided better on a large scale. The majority of the plans on the created exchanges, up to 87%, are funded by federal subsidies (Blumenthal, Abrams, & Nuzum, 2015). These plans must cover individuals regardless of pre-existing conditions. The burden of the cost of insurance shifted to tax-payers and the young/healthy who are now overly burdened with mandatory coverage that they may or may not need in
Health care costs affect family finances in two major ways: out-of-pocket spending, such as co-pays, deductibles, and prescriptions, and the family’s share of the health insurance premium. The United States health care spending growth continues to annually increase in expenditures that have stabilized at less than 4% per year. Rising cost-sharing is largely at...
Luckily under the new health care reform law, most people will receive help paying for their healthcare premiums and cost-sharing expenses that people with insurance have to pay out of pocket for doctor visits, and prescription medicine. Families and individuals will be able to receive this assistance with incomes between one hundred and four hundred percent of the federal poverty line. One hundred to four hundred percent makes up at about $23,000 to $94,000 a year assume this is for a family of four.
Taxes in relation to the new healthcare reform is a prominent topic when one examines the supporting and opposing sides of the law. New taxes on businesses producing medical equipment and new Medicare taxes on investments have been established. For individuals and businesses choosing not to participate in purchasing health insurance there will be a penalty called a "shared responsibility" tax. The accrued money from these taxes is being used, among other things, to provide low-cost insurance plans on the marketplace and to create subsidies for those purchasing the plans. Through these subsidies, "any individual making up to $45,960 or a family of four with household income up to $94,200 is eligible" ("Obamacare tax guide") to qualify and get assistance at the end of each year to off-set the cost of the insurance even more...
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act passed by President Barack Obama is a significant change of the American healthcare system since insurance plans programs like Medicare and Medicaid (“Introduction to”). As a result, “It is also one of the most hotly contested, publicly maligned, and politically divisive pieces of legislation the country has ever seen” (“Introduction to”). The Affordable Care Act should be changed because it grants the government too much control over the citizen’s healthcare or the lack of individual freedom to choose affordable health insurance.
Describe two to three performance measures that an analyst could use to assess the effectiveness of the Affordable Care Act. The New York Times article discusses several.
Nowak, Sarah, Christine Eibner, David M. Adamson, and Evan Saltzman. Effects of the Affordable Care Act on Consumer Health Care Spending and Risk of Catastrophic Health Costs. N.p.: RAND Corporation, 2013. Stable URL: Http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7249/j.ctt5hhv2q. Web.
The Affordable Care Act was signed into law almost three years ago. The aftereffects are still being felt when the law has not even taken full effect as of now (Affordable). The federal government’s healthcare exchange site had problems even before it was set to be open to the public. It took weeks to get the issues resolved. The whole Affordable Care Act comes with a five billion dollar price tag. The goal was to cover three hundred and seventy five thousand uninsured Americans, now only forty five thousand have signed...
Under the Affordable Care Act one of the most important provisions is to expand health care to low income families through Medicaid. This could have an effect on over eight million people who do not have access to health care currently. However 25 states have decided against expanding Medicaid benefits, leaving 13.5 million people less likely to receive basic health care and preventative ...