The United States spends 17 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on health care, by far the most of any nation in the world. In addition, the rate of health care spending is rapidly surpassing the rate of growth of the economy, consequently by 2080 the U.S economy is projected to account for forty percent of the health care spending ( ). Despite this high level of spending, there remains an enormous disparity in access to health care in our nation. Many of these disparities can be attributed to the fact that the United States is the only major industrialized nation without universal access to health care. Almost one in five of the non-elderly, 50 million Americans, have no health insurance coverage. The primary …show more content…
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 was signed into law on March 23, 2010. Since that moment, the United States healthcare system has undergone a constant transformation with the goal of providing medical coverage for millions of uninsured Americans. A key demographic of people being affected by these changes is the rapidly growing aging population, estimated to compose 19% of the total U.S. population by the year 2030. This age group is also responsible for the highest level of spending—per capita medical costs are approximately three times greater for those who are aged 65 and above than for younger …show more content…
The Affordable Care Act had certain objectives that by 2014, some of the provisions would be in place to address each of their objectives: (1) Help create State-based health insurance exchanges that will increase purchasing power, reduce administrative expenses, and increase competition to make premiums more affordable, (2) Provide subsidized coverage through health insurance exchanges to people who cannot afford to purchase insurance on their own, (3) Increase the number of young adults under the age of 26 who are covered as dependents on their parent’s employer-sponsored insurance policy, (4) Expand Medicaid coverage to more low-income Americans, (5) Reduce the prescription drug coverage gap for those receiving the Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit (6) Ensure access to health insurance and protect against unaffordable out-of-pocket costs by prohibiting insurers from placing lifetime limits on medical care, prohibiting insurers from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions, and prohibiting discriminatory premium rates based on health status or gender, (7) Prohibit insurance companies from dropping people from coverage when they get