Privatizing The Affordable Care Act

On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed the “Affordable Care Act” into law. Under this law all Americans have access to quality affordable health care. The main concern for many Americans about the Obama’s Health-Care plan is the fact that they will lose the freedom to choose. Choosing health-care benefits, doctors, and high deductible coverage is important to every insured American citizen, so why would Obama change that? In his speeches, Obama has promised Americans that they will be able to keep their existing health-care coverage but the proposed bills tell a different story. Both bills require that Americans buy approved plans that have a number of universal benefits or face penalties.

It has been one year since the implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Despite countless Republican attempts to repeal all or part of the new law, it is still with us and shows no sure signs of disintegration. The rollout of the government’s health care exchanges experienced significant growing pains right from the beginning. Time has fixed many of these technical glitches, but has done little to quell the debate over the affordability and viability of the law.

Questions are constantly circulating around the new Affordable Care Act. Many do not know what it does and the government is trying to make it out to be a big savior to the medical field for doctors and patients alike. The Affordable Care Act has also been given the name Obamacare because of its ties to the President. He believes that increasing the amount of people on insurances of any kind that meets his “standards” will help health care become more available and more profitable. Unfortunately, these claims are not true as Obamacare is clearly going to negatively impact health care in all aspects. The problems start for patients who get on government healthcare programs, such as Medicaid, with the fact that the treatment plans are extremely

Since the early days of our nation, our founding fathers thrived for change. At the peak of his election campaign, Barack Obama promised the change the country had been longing for. He promised a health care reform and new benefits. Many presidents elected after the signing of Roosevelt’s New Deal had tried to achieve health care reform but ultimately none succeeded. Obama promised change; his change came under the name of the Affordable Care Act, a bill that was filled with empty promises. The Affordable Care Act, nicknamed “Obamacare” was supposed to benefit all Americans but instead of helping our nation's citizens, it burdened them. It burdened them with higher taxes, less hours of work, and higher costs

In February 2017, the news was dominated by stories and video of town hall meetings with constituents telling their representatives stories of how the ACA had benefitted them or their loved ones in one way or another (Colliver, 2017). There is no doubt that the law has helped thousands, maybe even millions of people across the country. There have also been stories of individuals who have health insurance, but are unable to use it because of high deductibles, which effectively render the insurance policies these people hold emergency only plans (Luhby, 2016). This is most certainly an unintended consequence of a law that was written with good intentions, but which needs to be modified to work with the real life situations the citizens of this country are faced with.

On March 23, 2010 President Barack Obama introduced a new healthcare system because various Congress representatives and Obama believed our country needed a change. This new healthcare system was called the Affordable Care Act (ACA), better known as Obamacare. It is now 2016, and it is time for more changes. With a new president coming into office, Donald Trump, we can expect changes to Obamacare or an entirely new healthcare system altogether. Obamacare is costing Americans more than it was intended to (Galen Institute). This essay will explain why Obamacare needs to be improved and how to improve this healthcare system. Obamacare has two types of supporters. The first type of supporters believe there is nothing that can be done to make this healthcare system better, while the second type think there should be changes to reinforce this health care system. Opponents believe Obamacare needs to be changed or ended altogether because they claim it is not helping the American citizens. Going forward, Trump should make changes to Obamacare in order to make it stronger instead of scrapping it altogether.

Ever since Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) into law in 2010, it has been met by criticism from many people from many different ideologies. Although the law held promise for allowing all individuals to afford healthcare and all of its benefits, that is not to say it does not have its downsides. Since passing, both the conservative and democratic parties have found reasons to dislike the law. This essay will include a description of the law itself, criticisms from the two parties, and a personal reading into the Affordable Care Act and the potential it has at actually making a positive impact on the American health care industry.

The latest health care reform has done what few policies manage to do – sicken both republicans and progressive democrats. While we can all agree that a reform of the health care system is sorely needed, we must also acknowledge that “Obamacare” is not the cure-all we so desperately require. Rather, President Obama, like a medieval barber, prescribed a health care reform that treated the symptoms of our flawed system rather than the actual disease. The subsidization of health insurance providers has proven ineffective at providing affordable coverage for all. Certainly one is likely to hear the various incendiary talking points of both the proponents and opponents. Whether it’s the republican candidates blaspheming Obamacare as socialism, or the administration praising the success of health care for all, it is difficult to actually find constructive dialogue. We are purview to many sound bites, but few actual solutions. We have witnessed heated debates, but rarely do we witness intelligent discourse. If beneficial reform is to be crafted and implemented, we must first acknowledge the issues and inconsistencies of the current system and begin to explore alternate methods of providing health care to the American people.

The health care reform debate between 2008 and 2010 led to the passage of Patient Protection and Affordable Act. It was reminiscent of opportunities for reform that have occurred on a cyclical basis throughout American history. These opportunities occurred most notably in the presidential administrations of Franklin Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, and William J. Clinton. (Rich, Cheung, Lurvey, 79). We have to look at recent opportunities that have expanded today.

During the 1920s, individual hospitals were offering treatment for illness on a prepaid basis. (www.google.com) The first ever employer sponsored hospitalization plan was created by teachers in Dallas, Texas in 1929. The problem of giving services for free has faced the doctor and the hospital during the depression to an extent unknown in any other field. (www.google.com)

The implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), popularly known as “Obamacare”, has drastically altered healthcare in America. The goal of this act was to give Americans access to affordable, high quality insurance while simultaneously decreasing overall healthcare spending. The ACA had intended to maximize health care coverage throughout the United States, but this lofty ambition resulted in staggeringly huge financial and human costs.

The proposed health care reform bill attempts to change issues of public policy and health care management for the poor and uninsured. Many leaders from the Democratic Party are actively engaging in policy-making to fix what Rep. Henry Waxman (D-California) calls a “‘dysfunctional’ health care system” (2009). Currently, the U.S. health care system denies people with pre-existing conditions from receiving care. Another problem with the system is that the health insurance that some employers offer may be so expensive that their employees cannot afford it. Any cuts in Medicaid may mean that physicians have fewer incentives to provide adequate care for the poor. These are some of the many problems that the Affordable Health Choices Act attempts to address. Fiscally conservative political and business groups oppose this measure because they believe that any changes in public policy and health care management might affect them negatively.

The goal of this paper is to explain the downfalls of Obamacare and share the stories of individuals affected negatively and directly by the approval of the policy. Although Obamacare set out with good intentions, many people are still left without health care coverage because of the constant revisions of the bill. There have been many taxes raised for the approval of this policy, and has caused problems for individuals who do not want coverage under Obamacare but would want coverage under a different company. Obamacare has helped some, but has caused other problems that would make it a bill that should be up for repeal.

Creating a health care reform plan for the U.S. health care system is no easy task. Multiple things must be taken into consideration. These include making insurance affordable, making sure the plan is economically feasible, and creating a plan that will still work in the future. What hindered the reshaping of health care into a sustainable system in the past, are the health sectors interests that prefer the status quo. By continuing to cling on to yesterday’s model, the health care industry is creating its own peril (Schaeffer, 2007).

In the wake of the 2016 presidential election, concerns have been raised regarding the Republicans’ desire to repeal the Affordable Care Act, informally referred to as Obamacare. The ACA was originally enacted into law in 2010 and has been annually provisioned to expand its ability to not only improve the nation’s access to health care, but also to reform the health care delivery system. Through the ACA, private and public insurance has become more available and affordable, new health care delivery models have improved quality of care, and several workforce policies have made primary care a more desirable profession for medical students.