The federal government of the United States of America has for several decades been protecting the public health of Americans through policies. The American Health Care Act (AHCA) of 2017 is bill that was introduced in 2017 after the current president of the United States proposed to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act (ACA), a major health reform that has been operational in the country since 2010 (Wilensky, 2017). ACA has since then ensured that majority of American citizens acquire healthcare services at affordable costs. However, provisions of the first version of AHCA did not favor middle and low income. These AHCA differed to a large extent from the provisions of the current ACA provisions. For instance, contrary to the ACA where tax credits depended on income rather than age, the AHCA’s tax credit were dependent on age where older individuals would require a higher tax subsidy in order to purchase health insurance cover. The AHCA further provided that the individual mandate provision in the ACA which ensures that all American citizens have a healthcare insurance cover would be phased out and anyone without cover would not be penalized (Ranchordás, 2017)
The failure of passage of ACHA in its first attempt could have been due to the fact that majority of Americans viewed it unfavorably. This is because the provisions of AHCA would consequently lead to loss of healthcare insurance coverage for majority of Americans. Furthermore, failure to penalize people who choose not to be insured would mean that healthy people will forego taking a cover and hence making insurance very expensive for the sick people. In addition to this, the AHCA provisions would result in a majority of citizens being uninsured which would ultimately return the burden of uncompensated medical services to hospitals.
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References
Ranchordás, S. (2017). The American Health Care Act: Trumped wetgeving? RegelMaat , 32 (3), 202-205. doi:10.5553/rm/0920055x2017032003006
Wilensky, G. (2017). The Economics and Politics of the American Health Care Act. The Milbank Quarterly , 95 (3), 462-465. doi:10.1111/1468-0009.12268
