The Affordable Care Act; often referred to as Obamacare is a new health care reform that President Obama signed into law on March 23, 2010. The law was created to make health insurance more secure and reliable and most importantly accessible to all Americans according to Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). It was also created with the intent of providing new ways to bring down costs and improve the overall quality of care. Secretary Sebelius has also identified six objectives for the new health care plan. (HHS.gov)i
Objective A: Make coverage more secure for those who have insurance, and extend affordable coverage to the uninsured
Objective B: Improve healthcare quality and patient safety
Objective C: Emphasize primary and preventive care linked with community prevention services
Objective D: Reduce the growth of healthcare costs while promoting high-value, effective care
Objective E: Ensure access to quality, culturally competent care for vulnerable populations
Objective F: Promote the adoption and meaningful use of health information technology
The original compilation of the Affordable Care Act is just under twenty four hundred pages and can be quite timely and difficult to read through. Because of the complexity of the plan it has been highly controversial from the beginning. The sheer volume of pages allows each side to extract the facts that support its point of view which makes fact finding quite difficult. The truth is, only history will be able to judge whether the Affordable Care Act will be a success. Until then, this paper will strive to point out the fundamental facts, pros, and cons of Obamacare, and how it is affecting people and businesses alike. In order to find an objective source and the truth in the Affordable Care Act many sources were researched and attempt to only use non-partisan sources was also implemented. These sources included the following; FactCheck.org, The Congressional Budget Office, Politifact.com, and the Center for Public integrity.
Two provisions that seem universally acceptable to both sides of the political aisle begin with the requirement of all Americans not covered by the government plans Medicare or Medicaid must purchase insurance coverage from private companies. The second which was originally proposed by Republicans was that of the state health insurance marketplaces now referred to as exchanges. These exchanges would create competition for private insurance companies vying for new customers. Most interesting in all the controversy is that the legislation was created to cover the 35 million of uninsured Americans. In a country of 315 million it is estimated that only 15 million people buy health insurance on their own and the other twenty million either choose not to invest in health coverage or will be covered in the expanded Medicare programs. That means that all this vitriol is over less than 5% of the population. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 55 percent of Americans are enrolled in health insurance through their employer, 32 percent receive health benefits via Medicare, Medicaid and other public programs (Caswell, O’Hara)ii. With the expansion of Medicare for the underprivileged, the remaining underinsured Americans is 5 percent.
The basic structure of the health care law is based on four benefit levels of coverage; metallic levels based on how much of the cost is covered monthly versus when actually needed (Independence)iii. The four levels are labeled platinum, gold, silver, and bronze, and were created so that you could choose which plan best suits your medical needs. The platinum plan has the highest monthly premium, but the cheapest when you receive any kind of medical care. On the other side you have the bronze plan, which has a very low monthly premium, but will be highly expensive when you have a serious medical need. If you are someone who has a great deal of medical issues or reoccurring
