Obama Care
On March 23, 2010 President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as Obama Care, into law. The ACA was an attempt by President Obama to try and fix health care rates.
Obama Care’s first round of opening rolls started on October 1, 2013.
The overall aim of ACA is to increase the affordability and quality of health insurances, expand public and private insurance coverage, and to reduce the cost of healthcare for individuals and the government.
UHS teacher Mark Foley said, “Most everyone will now have health care insurance so in the case that people end up needing health care their overall costs will be reduced as well; which is good.”
It attempts to do this by including mandates and having certain subsidies.
To be eligible for government subsidies the individual’s employer-based health insurances must be higher then 9.5% of their household income.
Obama Care requires everyone to buy health insurance and is kind of a “buy in insurance”.
Foley said, “Obama Care is Obama’s key piece of legislation that essentially forces every American citizen to purchase health insurance.”
A premium is the amount an individual would have to pay for a health care plan to purchase health coverage.
Obama care also has a large effect on insurance premiums where more people will pay less than they did before Obama care. The exception to this is if you already have subsidies offered to you under Obama Care.
This was a large talking point for Obama: the overall cost of health care would be reduced for most Americans.
The act is given through state-based exchanges, which happen on several websites that are run by the federal government. They will fill out a government form to see if they are eligible for subsidies and then will purchase insurance of their choice from the website.
Obama Care is designed to create a market for private based insurance.
However, this is where many people disagree with how health care should be handled. The other side of the argument is that health care should be a single payer system. Instead of buying insurance from private insurers the government pays for all health care costs. The reason for this is because of how the system for health care is set up right now, some of money spent does not go to providing care for anyone; it goes to insurances companies.
Foley said, “A socialist approach in which the government ensures the right to life by providing free health care to all citizens would be a much better approach.”
Another one of the federal mandates with Obama Care is that insurers cannot deny insurances to individuals with preexisting conditions.
UHS teacher Michael Pollock said, “[Obama Care] Is designed to prevent insurance companies from excluding patients who really need health care, such as those with preexisting conditions.”
Obama Care was trying to broaden the poll of contributors to the younger generation of adults who usually do not use the health care system as much as older people do.
Pollock said, “Designed to cover more people and lower costs, but with a very rocky start that is in serious doubt.”
The doubt that is going on with the problem is the website used for signing up for health care. Many are unable to use it and the website often crashes and is very slow. This makes it very hard to sign up for health insurance by Obama Care.
Only 26,794 people have either signed up or have been able to sign up for health care and this is throwing Obama Care into a nasty light. Out of the 50 million uninsured people that Obama promised health care to, only 26,794 people were able to sign up for it.
Individuals have till December 15th of this year to sign up to be covered for January 1st. So, the government still has some time to get the bumps of Obama Care smoothed over. However, time is running out fast.
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