The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is also known as the ObamaCare is a healthcare reform in the laws of the USA that improves and expands access to curbs spending and care via taxes and regulations. The major focus of this act is to provide more American citizens with easy access to affordable health insurance, regulating the health insurance sector, improving the quality of healthcare as well as health insurance, reducing the amount spent on health care in the United States. There are many different provisions in the Act that are used to address the different aspects of health care in the United States (ObamaCare Facts, 2016). The act aims at enabling the large employers to provide coverage for their full-time employees.
According to Rick Newman (2015), practically all the Republicans members want to revoke the ObamaCare Act, which is the most noteworthy part of legislation that was passed under the current President Barrack Obama. Even Hillary Clinton, a long-time government health care advocate, has some issues with some core provisions of the Affordable Care Act. Moreover, Ross Douthat (2015) of the Newspaper “New York Times” dictates that over the past years of the Obama era, many Republicans in the country have become skeptical about the President’s health care act and some of them have gone further to dub it as immoral, unconstitutional and tyrannical. According to them, this law was going to fail drastically in a death spiral that would take down many Americans with it. Fortunately, these predictions failed to come, and this Affordable Care Act (ACA) has survived two challenges from the Supreme Court, it has survived the wave of premium increases and cancellations, it has beaten the website fiasco at the time of its rollout, and most importantly, it has enrolled millions of the uninsured Americans. Hence, the Act is working; it’s achieving what it’s was supposed to do in the first place as it has hugely reduced the number of people that did not have health insurance.
The ACA Act has extended the coverage in insurance to over 10 million people via different changes in the Medicaid campaign and yet 10 million Americans more through friendly insurance policies; hence 20 million individuals have health insurance that did not have it before the ObamaCare program (Rick Newman, 2015). However, it was estimated by the CBO that the act would extend to coverage of 23 million by the year 2015 which was not achieved but still in the game. After the initial surge, the enrollment to the ACA Act has mostly disappointed. For instance, the act has knocked down the rate of the uninsured in the United States to about 11% to 12%, compared to the Pre-Great Recession level of 14% to 15% (Ross Douthat). According to this trend, it seems like the ObamaCare exchanges will eventually fall at least by four million enrollees at the end of 2016. Furthermore, the people who are constantly enrolling for the act are sicker and are heavily subsidized than either the participating insurers and the government had hoped. The healthy uninsured are many at times choosing to pay the tax and go without the regular coverage. This typically means that at the begin lower expected premiums charged on the exchange are on the rise, and main insurers may end up following the United Healthcare Organization and exit if the numbers do not improve over time.
On the other hand, if the fine for lacking health insurance went up then, more and more people will enroll, and it is estimated that the number will increase to 34 million by the end of this year and 38 million by the end of 2017 (Newman, 2015). This would mean that the number of citizens with health insurance would rise from a mere 81 percent before the Affordable Care Act went into effect to over 90 percent by the year 2017. The ObamaCare, however, comes with a cost. Extending the insurance to 20 million more people will cost the taxpayers a total of about 145 billion dollars by 2022, where it is expected to be leveled out (Newman, 2015). In addition to that, some of the provisions of the Act are infamous such as the necessity for most Americans to buy insurance or get a penalty.
All in all, before the Affordable Care Act, many uninsured people were poor and near-poor, so it’s not surprising that the citizens with the lowest incomes majorly benefited the most from the insurance coverage expansion. The act made Medicaid easily available to low-income Americans in different states, and it also subsidized the health coverage to the people by buying private plans who earned very little. With the act thoroughly in place, citizens who repeal it are not considerate and realistic. However, it is likely that in the near future the law will be altered to address current tribulations. For instance, deductibles and other health cost have been rapidly rising which will undermine the value of being covered. The ObamaCare act may be working, however, that does not mean that it is working efficiently.
Works Cited
Douthat, Ross. "The Fate of Obamacare." The New York Times 19 Dec. 2015: n. pag. Web. 14 Apr. 2016. <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/20/opinion/sunday/the-fate-of-obamacare.html?_r=0>.
Newman, Rick. "Obamacare is working, whether you like it or not." Yahoo News 11 Dec. 2015: n. pag. Web. 14 Apr. 2016. <http://finance.yahoo.com/news/if-you-hate-obamacare--don-t-read-this-154048355.html#>.
"What is ObamaCare | What is the Affordable Care Act?" Obamacare Facts. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Apr. 2016.
