On March 23, 2010, Congress endorsed The Affordable Care Act [ACA], otherwise dubbed The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act [PPACA], into legislation as a measure to reform the nation’s healthcare system (Hill 445). The new health care statute encompassed improvements to “appropriate, reasonable, or essential” health benefits and measures to regulate health costs through rules and regulations for the health care industry and insurance companies (Hill 445-446). The Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, which includes Fiscal Responsibility Acts and Student Aid, also went into the amendment of the PPACA. Hence, the “ObamaCare” is the ACA in its entirety: it is a new law that covers all the bills that amend it and those it alters to give new rules and changes to the American healthcare structure.
Initially, as J. D. Kleinke explains in The Conservative Case for Obamacare, health insurance in the United States required “younger [and] healthier people subsidize [the] older [and] sicker ones” (par.3). However, since the subsidization was not only voluntary but also expensive, many opted out, and the State could not pursue payments without defying the constitutional rights of the masses. The new law found a way around the dilemma. First, the reform laid out in the PPACA “forcibly repatriates” those who are capable of providing the necessary financial support but fail to do so and the ones who cannot afford the same by giving a plan that “cross-subsidizes” their medical needs (Kleinke par.4). In other words, when patients show up in the Emergency Room, they receive the same financial aid regardless of their income. The second change made to the provision of healthcare by ObamaCare involves the outlawing of discrimination against the individuals who want to participate but are ineligible “because of their medical histories” (Kleinke par.4). B. Jessie Hill sheds light on the issue of discrimination within the healthcare system in the article “What Is the Meaning of Health?” According to the author, an illustration of discrimination in the regulations of health provision is evident in cases of “assisted suicide” where a terminally ill patient “can hasten death” only when he or she is on life support (Hill 460). By that logic, the ACA makes health insurance in the United States both reliable and secure while guaranteeing affordability from the personal to the institutional level.
With the given facts in mind, it makes sense that the major strengths and liabilities of ObamaCare stem from the decision to allocate the same quality of healthcare to all persons despite their levels of income. On the one hand, the expansion in coverage has paved the way for high quality and affordable healthcare for millions of Americans who could not afford the same. In Obamacare’s Ups And Downs, As Seen by a Republican Doctor, Francine Kiefer informs her readers that since the ACA, national statistics showed that a record low of “8.6 percent of people” did not have health insurance by the first quarter of 2016 (par.20). In South Tucson, Arizona, a “$5 million federal grant” to the El Rio Community Health Center set the foundations on which the people could access the same level of health care they could if they had access to private practices (Kiefer par.23). That is so despite the truth that most of the patients [60%] “live at or below the federal poverty line” (Kiefer par.23). On the contrary, and in an undeniable liability, there is the mandate that all persons ought to “carry health insurance” (Kleinke par.6). The individual mandate asserts that Americans who can afford health insurance decide not to do so since, in their views, there is no need to “[trade] away today’s wants for tomorrow’s needs” (Kleinke par.6). Hence, to encourage the acquisition of health insurance among the masses, the individual mandate dictates an ultimatum: everyone who can afford a health cover has to get it unless he or she gets an exemption or pays a fee (Hill 446). One has to consider the people who barely beat the federal poverty line to understand the given liability; unmistakably, they will not qualify for assistance and will still have to take up health insurance.
In conclusion, a repeal of ObamaCare promises both long-term and short-term outcomes. On the short-term basis, the immediate aftermath of no ObamaCare promises the people will have control over whether or not they want health insurance and taxes are set to reduce as the government relinquishes its current duties within the ACA. About the long-term effects, it makes sense to predict a drop in health care services as people will have limited access to quality and affordable medical assistance. Perhaps the repeal is the worst thing that can happen to the American people, especially those who benefited the most from ObamaCare: such as the terminally ill individuals.
Works Cited
Hill, B Jessie. "What Is the Meaning of Health? Constitutional Implications of Defining “Medical Necessity” and “Essential Health Benefits” Under the Affordable Care Act." American Journal of Law & Medicine, vol.38, 2012, pp.445-470. SAGE Publications, http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/009885881203800208. [Academic Journal]
Kiefer, Francine. "Obamacare’s Ups And Downs, As Seen by a Republican Doctor." The Christian Science Monitor, 25 October 2016, http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2016/1025/Obamacare-s-ups-and-downs-as-seen-by-a-Republican-doctor. [Conservative Source]
Kleinke, J D. "The Conservative Case for Obamacare." The New York Times, 29 September 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/30/opinion/sunday/why-obamacare-is-a-conservatives-dream.html. [Liberal Source]
