The bill aims to ensure that more than thirty million people will be under insurance cover. By providing subsidies and expanding Medicaid, middle class earners together with low-income earners have access to private coverage.
In addition, the bill prevents insurers from denying coverage to individuals based on pre-existing conditions. This gives access to insurance to millions of citizens. In the end, it contributes largely to the existence of a healthy nation. The bill also aims to ensure, more people are able to access them private insurance coverage.
The policies main objective behind the drafting of the bill involves ensuring that poor people are able to access insurance coverage thus limiting the prerogative of insurance companies. This, therefore, means that insurance coverage will not be denied to some individuals on the basis of their inability to pay hefty premiums. President Obama’s bill also aims to reduce the cost of Medicaid. In a bid to reduce healthcare costs, the government has taken measures ensures that it reimburses health care costs to only those people whose treatments were effective. To establish this, the government has created a panel of experts. Furthermore, it introduced incentives to healthcare service providers with the aim of motivating them to increase the bundle of services they offer rather than have individual procedures charged. This drastically reduces the cost of healthcare for low-income and middle-income earners in the country.
For the implementation of this law to become successful, the government of the United States will spend roughly$1,168 billion. This cost has, however, been spread over a period of ten years. Republican congress members, however, feel that Obama’s healthcare bill is illogical. Therefore, no congress members from the Republican side voted for it.
Instead, the Republican congress men moved to the Supreme Court to have the bill removed. However, in order for them to succeed in stopping the bill from becoming a law, they were required to give alternative measures to replace the bill. It was important to have this done, as there would be a massive gap left. This gap needed filling.
An alternative to the bill was to have costs of healthcare reduced. The basis of this argument was the fact that once healthcare were reduced, more individuals would be able to access healthcare. This was meant to increase the number of individuals able to access healthcare in the country. However, in light of the healthcare bill this alternative could not hold its ground.
In addition to this, there were proposals to bring back legislations from decades in the past. These were legislations, whose aims were to allow individuals to buy insurance across state lines. Such a bill would allow an individual to find a suitable insurance provider that best caters for their needs. In addition to this, by allowing an individual to get coverage outside state lines, insurance companies would rush to keep clients and attract more. This would result into these companies reducing the cost of their insurance.
Furthermore, the legislation would allow small businesses to come together and buy insurance. This allows people who were unable to buy an insurance cover on their own to come together and purchase insurance collectively. It would increase the number of people accessing insurance cover in the country, promoting healthcare. Additionally, republicans proposed the option of having generous tax deductions allowing the purchase of insurance policies by many Americans. Furthermore, the proposal to have tax-favored health saving accounts was an alternative to the bill.
This policy would increase the accessibility of quality healthcare to a larger number of citizens since they would be able to afford insurance cover. The increased accessibility would be made possible through the reduction of healthcare costs to such a level that even the low-income earners are able to afford healthcare.
Wider access to healthcare is the main objective of this alternative policy. However, this policy does not need the excess funds such as is with the healthcare bill. All the government s required to do is offer subsidies to its citizens. This will save taxpayers a lot of money.
The country’s system of tax payment puts a lot of tax pressure on the rich. However, this alternative policy puts improves the health consideration of the rich. Under this policy, they will not be unduly taxed to fund the government’s healthcare bill.
References
Andrews, P. S. (2012, November 8). www.nytimes.com. Retrieved January 27, 2013, from New York Times: http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/health_insurance_and_managed_care/health_care_reform/index.html
