The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act popularly known as Obama Care, was passed into law in the year 2010. The system has created various benefits, which are being realised by Americans from the time it was enacted until today. This is because it facilitates people earning relatively low incomes either individually or as a family to afford financing their healthcare. This program ensures that insurance companies continue covering people even when their health status is deteriorating (Golding, 2010). This system serves to ensure that most people with pre-existing conditions are able to obtain medical insurance covers. Obama care has brought about reforms in the health sector that has led to a decline in wasteful spending. As a result of this Medicare has become relatively affordable.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act facilitate the seniors to be able to utilise the existing health care facilities. This is because, through this act, they are able to continue being insured by the insurance companies, which they had insured them when they were young. As a result, the life expectancy of the people living in the United States is likely to improve significantly (Kaplan, Davidson, & Suls, 2010). This is because most of the seniors used to pass on very early in life, and this is attributed to lack of insurance covers.
Insurance Compensation and Benefits under Obama Care Act
Lack of an insurance cover at old age puts a lot of financial challenges on the seniors. Most of the senior cannot be able to work because they have retired. This implies that most of them are either at their own homes, living with their children or in homes for the seniors. In most cases at their age, an individual is normally prone to health care problems thus leading to the increase in health care expenses (Vivar, 2010). The seniors who are able to afford to cater for their health care expenses tend to live a better quality life than those who could not afford. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act place special emphasis on the healthcare programs for the seniors thus making them enjoy quality health services in an affordable manner.
This Act will facilitate approximately thirty two million people who live in the United States to access medical insurance covers. This is because the act has significantly reduced the cost of medical insurance thus making it affordable to most of the citizens. The implementation of this act will take a period of four years commencing from the year 2011 and ending in the year 2014. Upon the implementation of this act, it will be a prerequisite for every citizen of the United States to be having a medical insurance cover (Kluwer, 2010). The government is keen to note that people who are willing to have a medical insurance cover are at a risk of facing a penalty. The manner through which a person is insured does not matter, as long as the insurance cover is valid. One can obtain insurance cover through their employers, or they can even choose to acquire it privately.
Affordability and Accessibility of Health Care under Obama Care
Persons who are not able to afford medical insurance cover, through this act will be able to enjoy additional options. One of the options they can use is to secure a medical insurance cover through the expanded Medicare guidelines. Another option, which they can utilise, is procuring medical insurance covers from a health insurance exchange that is state based. It is estimated that, through the patient protection and affordable health care act, there will be an increase of approximately $940 billion to the national budget. This appears to be a significant increase in the total expenses of the country. However, ten years after full implementation of this act, the national deficit is likely to decrease by approximately $143 billion. This is because the government will increase the level of Medicare taxes that are charged on household that have high incomes (Kotecki, Pinger, & McKenzie, 2010).
The government will also assess taxes on persons who do not have a medical insurance cover, as well as organisations, which do not provide their employees with medical insurance covers. It is also through this act that the federal government will lower level of payments that it makes to hospitals. This is because most of the patients will be insured thus the hospitals will be claiming their payments from the insurance companies and not from the government.
The patient protection and affordable care act require insurance companies to put their medical insurance covers in mediums, whereby the people can be able to analyse them. This will facilitate a vast majority of the people to take advantage of insurance covers that they deem to be suitable. This new law also champions for the children’s’ right, to proper health care. This results from the fact that this law requires that insurance companies should insure all children that are of either nineteen years or below (Roundtable on Health Literacy, 2010). In the past, children who were nineteen years or below, and they were suffering from pre – existing medical conditions were not being able to access medical insurance covers. According to insurance companies, insuring them would be very costly, and this was due to the fact that, frequency of such children to health facilities would be high to manage their medical condition (Sullivan & Gray, 2011). As a result, insurance companies find it unprofitable to insure such people because such patients will benefits from the medical insurance covers.
In the past insurance companies used to look for ways through which they could cancel an individual’s medical cover. For instance, they would examine an individual’s insurance application form so as to look for errors, which would form the basis of rescinding a medical insurance cover (Schmidt, 2011). The insurance companies would execute such a move whenever they determined that it was no longer profitable to insure a particular party. In line with that, the patient protection and affordable health care act has brought about the elimination of lifetime coverage limits. This means that insurance companies are supposed to continue providing medical insurance covers to their customers until the end of their life. In the past insurance companies used to provide medical insurance covers to their customers until they attain an age of approximately 65 years. Thereafter such people were considered uninsurable, due to high proneness to diseases that come with age (Staff Post, 2010). The insurance companies expressed that it was not profitable to insure such persons, as they would increase cost.
References
Golding, H. L. (2010). Potential Costs of Veterans' Health Care. Washington: Congress Budget Office.
Kaplan, R. M., Davidson, K. W., & Suls, J. M. (2010). Handbook of health psychology and behavioral medicine. New York: The Guilford Press.
Kluwer, W. (2010). Law, Explanation and Analysis of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Volume 1. New York: Aspen Publishers.
Kotecki, J. E., Pinger, R., & McKenzie, J. (2010). An Introduction to Community Health. New York: Jones & Barlett Learning.
Niles, N. J. (2011). Basics of the U. S. Health Care System. New York: Jones & Barlett.
Roundtable on Health Literacy. (2010). Health Literacy Implications for Health Care Reform: Workshop Summary. New York: The National Academies Press.
Schmidt, P. L. (2011). Medicare and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. New York: Nova Science Publishers.
Staff Post. (2010). Landmark: The Inside Story of America's New Health Care Law and What It Means for Us All. Washington: United States Public Affairs.
Sullivan, K. C., & Gray, B. J. (2011). Provisions in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). New York: Nova Science Publishers.
Vivar, L. M. (2010). Obama'sHealth Care Reform 2010: From Change to Concession? New York: GRIN.
