Affordable Care Act Pros And Cons

The Affordable Care Act, better known as Obama Care, was signed into law under President Barak Obama in order to reform the heath care system on March 23, 2010. The goal of the ACA is to give Americans access to affordable, quality health insurance. The biggest benefit of the ACA is that it lowers overall health care costs. It does this by providing insurance for millions and making preventitive care free. Insurance companies can longer deny coverage for pre-existing conditions, it eliminates lifetime and annual coverage limits, and children can stay on their parents' health insurance plans up to age 26.
Although there are many beneifits to the ACA, almost immedietly after being signed into law the act faced emense scruitney and became a largely

debatable topic for all, many believing it to be unconstitutional. The primary dividing issue relating to the ACA, constitution-wise, is the individual mandate. This is the part of the law that forces you to buy health insurance, or suffer a fine for the time you were uninsured. The idividual mandate threatens the foundations of Conract Law. American contract kaw rests on the prinicpal of mutual assent. If I force you to sign a contract, no court of law will honor that document since I coerced you into signing it. Mutual assent must be present in order for a contract to be valid and binding. The individual mandate turns this longstanding principle on its head. After all, there's nothing mutual about the government forcing you to enter into a binding contract with a private company.

The individual mandate held up in the Supreme Court on June 28, 2012, because it was referred to as a "tax". Therefore, as a new tax, it was able to be implemented constitutionally in the eyes of the Court. However, based upon the IDEAS in the constitution, forcing individuals to buy a product, or pay a fine, is extremely unconstitutional. The law and its proponents see it as a tax, the opponents see it as a fine for not purchasing a product which is why this topic will remain widely debatable.