Alisha Williamson
Professor Doval
Corporate Sustainability Date 11-10-2014
Healthcare Discussion
The first video I watched was the “Obamacare and October 1st: healthcare Triage #1”. The main goal of the video was to help people get a better understanding on how medical research and health policies work, and making sense of some of the confusing information that are spread throughout the world. The video starts off with Dr. Aaron Carroll answering questions that his friend John Green has regarding Obamacare. Some of the questions that were asked and answers included are as following:
Q: “Are the cost of families insurance is going to triple over the next year?” A: “No.”
Q: “Under Obamacare medications are going to have side effects.”
A: “That was already the case.”
After these questions were asked and answered, the video went on to talks about what Obamacare really is. Obamacare was passed in the year 2010 but big pieces of it didn’t go into effect until October 10 2013. There are about 47,000,000 people in the U.S. that were without insurance coverage. In some cases people go uninsured because they either can’t afford the insurance cost or they already have some chronic disease and worry that no one will cover them. With Obamacare, it is the law that no one could be denied insurance if they wanted to buy it, therefore implementing a Guaranteed Issue. Another goal Obamacare wanted to see through was community ratings meaning that people should all be charged the same price whether you are sick or not. Dr. Aaron Carroll points out that under this plan however, people who are not sick may become encouraged to just wait to buy medical insurance until they get sick since they can buy it at the same cost. This would be a huge premium increase. He then goes on to say to avoid a death spiral a penalty should be charged, which is done by Obamacare. If you do not have health care insurance you will be charge 95 dollars or 1% of your income, this is called an individual mandate. To make sure that people who may not be able to afford Obamacare or the penalties, they will be offered a tax credit if they make fewer than 400% of the poverty line, these are called the subsidies of Obamacare. Next I went on the white house website and went under the section that talked about young adults and healthcare. The reason I went to this section is because most of us are at the age where we are on our parents insurance or searching for insurance of our own. I was on my parents insurance up until I recently turned 21, after that my parents insurance dropped me and I had to get my own insurance. Around this time open enrollment for Obamacare was going on but I really had no idea of what I was doing. I wish I was able to have known about articles like this earlier because it would have helped. In the article it talks about children under the age of 26 and how they can continue to stay on parents plan until 26 or get coverage of their own, even if you are married, not living with parents, or attending school. Overall this was really informational discussion and I really enjoyed
