Essay On Obamacare

Obamacare is a healthcare program developed in the United States and introduced to Congress in September of 2009 with a goal of creating affordable health insurance for all or most Americans. One of the main points was to reduce health care spending within the United States and expand the availability of private and public health insurance. Although it does not control individuals’ health care, it offers numerous protections for American citizens, some of which include; permitting adults to stay covered on their health insurance plans until the age of twenty-six, prevent insurance agencies from misconduct and releasing clients who are ill, as well as doing away with limits which include annual and lifetime options (Obamacare Facts). In addition to requiring insurance companies to cover people with preexisting illnesses it also provides essential health benefits such as the right to emergency care, hospitalization, counseling and screenings for potential illnesses (Obamacare Facts).
Obamacare also introduces new taxes that are created in order to subsidize costs for middle class Americans and smaller businesses, this coupled with an employer mandate to provide health insurance to all full time employees by 2015 has created a strong sense of dissatisfaction within a plethora of interest groups and political parties (Obamacare Facts). Many felt as though the push for Obamacare was a push towards a more socialized America in terms of medicine and corporate health care (Faria, 2012). Should individuals or companies decide not to comply with the law, large fines are to be administered by the federal government. In turn, this brought about a heavy sense of “usurpation of liberty” and “gradual loss of freedom” that Americans have gotten u...

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...ugh they remained minimal (McAuliff, 2013). The Obama administration knew that they would have to work hard to gain back the trust of the public and so the changes that ensued were ones which also pleased the Democrats, one of which included more restrictions on income variation for people receiving subsidies and the option to opt out of automatic enrollment by employers into the Obamacare plan (Republican Ideas Included in the President’s Proposal).
Essentially, President Obama may have taken his role as a leader for granted. The Obamacare legislation had garnered much opposition, and remains unfavorable to Republicans, and “lukewarm’ to Democrats at best. It did not do well in gathering supporters and until today, Obamacare seems to be more of an aspiration than a realistic plan to benefit and improve the American health care system (Kernell et al., 2014, p.304).