The new healthcare reform law known as the Affordable Care Act is complex, it runs about a thousand pages even in tiny prints so its no surprise that very few Americas have actually read and understood it but it affects every one of us in this room.
So what is it? On March 23, 2010, President Barack Obama signed into law the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). It is a United States health care reform law that expands and improves access to healthcare providing more Americans with affordable healthcare thus improving the quality of health, in easy words to cover more people and add more benefits. The main changes caused by this law are, insurance companies can’t deny you coverage because of preexisting conditions everyone is guaranteed and required to get insurance or pay a penalty, no lifetime limits which means there is no limit what a person can spend on healthcare and what companies can be charged which is a big deal if you have serious health problems, women can’t be charged more than men for our health insurance which is the way it uses to be before affordable care act if you are under 26 and your parents have a policy you can be under that policy until the age of 26 something that did not happen before, starting in 2015 large and small companies have to ensure their full-time employees.
Many of us have been wondering what it will mean to our health, our wallets, and to this country. I will address this question in my informative paper that what this law means to our health, to our wallets, and to this country. I have chosen this topic because it will help me in my major and this reform affects me personally.
The first source in my paper is one is the case study by Jonathan Gruber named “how reasonable are the projections” in which he compares the Healthcare reform in Massachusetts carried out in April 2006. The results of which he shows a decline in the number of uninsured people by 60 percent and 69 percent actually supported the law and the benefits of the reform were far more than the costs. (US spends 17.1 % of its GDP on healthcare. Far more than any other country in the world). The second source I have used is the facts from the Affordable Care Act website which shows the decline in uninsured individuals from 15.7 percent before the law was signed to 8.6 percent today. There is a direct quote from Hillary Clinton from recent presidential debates in which she said “Right now we are at 90% health insurance coverage, that’s the highest we have ever been in our country…So I want us to get to hundred percent but get the costs down and keep the quality up.”
In my research paper, I discuss the projected impact of ACA in detail. I am currently reviewing the evidence from a key case study that compares ACA to a health reform that was carried out in Massachusetts in April 2006. I discuss the key results from that earlier reform and what they might imply for the ACA.
In my persuasive paper, I will write on, whether we are better off having a simple healthcare system rather than applying healthcare reform (Obamacare). I can argue that if fully implemented, the ACA will reshape the U.S. healthcare system for decades to come. As such, it is very difficult to accurately predict its impacts since it’s just been a year since it was fully implemented but similar healthcare reforms from different countries show that it will be beneficial for the country in long run.
