The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is a health care law that was signed in the United States in March 2010, for the purpose of improving health care. It was also introduced so as to lower the government’s expenditure on health care services for the legal citizens. There are major considerations of the government in implementing The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The main aim is to achieve near-universal coverage by sharing the responsibility among government, individuals, and employers. The other consideration is on the health insurance coverage by ensuring that most of the legal population have an insurance plan. This paper will discuss the considerations of the act, some of its key aspects and the rationales and criticism of the individual and employer mandate.
The Affordable Care Act sets federal standards for health insurers by offering products to individuals as well as employer-sponsored health benefit plans. The purpose of this act is to improve the value and quality of health care, strengthen primary health care access and ensure strategic investment in public health (Partners, 2019). It also ensures that there is no discrimination among the different age groups in the society. This brings about long term changes into Medicare and Medicaid where the services, different modes of payment and new investments are being made in Medicaid. There is additional personalized prevention planning methods which are included in Medicare. According to Blumenthal & Squires (2014), an employer can offer their employee a health insurance that is the minimum standard for affordability or they can pay the federal government a penalty if at least one of their employees receives a federal subsidy for a private insurance plan. As for the individual mandate, all of the citizens are required to have a health insurance plan or they will be penalized for not having one.
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There are key aspects of the act which were rolled out within a period of four years from 2010. For the first year in 2010, the focus was on the protection of all consumers. Information on the Affordable Care Act was made available to all consumers so that they could be in a position to make informed decisions on the insurance plans. The information was made available online for easy access. In the second year, consumers got preventive healthcare services for free as it is cheaper to prevent a disease as opposed to treating a disease that is full blown. The insurance companies were also held accountable by addressing overpayments and other issues encountered. In the third year, there was open enrolment in the health insurance marketplace and new voluntary options were provided and lastly in the fourth year, all legal Americans would have access to affordable insurance options and even the low income earners would be in a position to benefit from the Medicaid and they would gain coverage from the Affordable Care Act.
Considering that The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act seems to have a number of benefits, there are still rationales and criticism to it. Since it became law, there have been arguments that it is unconstitutional (Amadeo, 2019) . The rationale on the employer mandate is that the coverage requirement goes beyond the idea of shared sacrifice. Policymakers have made it hard for employers by encouraging them to either drop the health coverage completely or to limit their benefits so that the employees will end up buying insurance other sources. On the other hand, the rationale behind the individual mandate is that the pool of risk created by those who pay for premiums but only a small number will file a claim is large enough to lower premiums for everyone. This means that coverage is made affordable for everyone else.
In addition, some of the opponents argue that the Affordable Care Act will affect the economic growth in a negative way. This is because they claim that it will encourage a high level of dependency on the government by a large group of people. The Democrats however see it to be better to have people depending on the government for their health care expenses than to not have any health insurance plan (Araujo, 2019 ) . These different views and divisions concerning The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act come from people who hold completely different understanding and beliefs of the act. There is more criticism on the act concerning the financial penalties that those who fail to comply shall face. Some of the states that have Republicans in control tried the repeal-and-replace method to try and curb the heavy financial penalty but they failed to get support of the congress.
In conclusion, there has been a number of shortcomings of The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act like taxing those who did not purchase insurance, raised income tax for people with high income and a high number of people ended up relying on private health insurance due to lack of company plans, families ended up deducting a higher percentage of their income for medical expenses as compared to before, the number of people with health insurance cover was seen to reduce so this meant that it would cost them more money to access medical services. The act did not get the support of the Republican, though it should be recognized as a historic change in providing Affordable Care. This is because a large population in America has been able to benefit from it.
References
Amadeo, K. (2019). How the Affordable Health Care Act Affects You . [online] The Balance. Available at: https://www.thebalance.com/2010-patient-protection-affordable-care-act-3306063
Araujo, M. (2019). Pluses and Minuses of ACA Obama's Health Care Reform . The Balance. Retrieved from https://www.thebalance.com/obamas-health-care-reform-2645661.
Blumenthal, D., & Squires, D. (2014). The Employer Mandate: Essential or Dispensable? | Commonwealth Fund. Retrieved from https://www.commonwealthfund.org/blog/2014/employer-mandate-essential-or-dispensable
Partners, L. (2019). The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act . LBMC Family of Companies. Retrieved from https://www.lbmc.com/blog/the-patient-protection-and-affordable-care-act/ .
