Obamacare

The Obamacare scheme is now being discussed in relation to the American healthcare system. Obamacare is a nickname for the Patient Safety and Affordable Care Act of 2010, which President Barack Obama signed into law and went into effect in 2014. This represents the expansion of services and important regulatory reform in the United States system following the passage of Medicaid and Medicare in 1965. This act was also approved by the 111th Congress of the United States (Patel, Kant, and Mark 94-96). Obamacare requires minors to remain on their parents' health plans until they reach the age of 26. The act completely eradicates the annual and lifetime limits unlike previously where insurance companies had placed a maximum mark of the insurance costs to 1 million US dollars in a year. Also, it lowers the rate at which the costs of health care rise through insuring many people and availing the preventive care for free, to every insured individual. Finally, it prevents the insurers from denying any individual coverage regardless of the conditions that pre-exist (Patel, Kant, and Mark 94-96).

On the other hand, the Obamacare is disadvantageous in that, many people who were privately insured lost their insurance plans after being annulled by the respective companies due to failure to cover all the 10 necessary benefits of the act. Additionally, the fees paid by pharmaceutical companies have been raised by almost 84 billion dollars to cover the gap in the Medicare. Lastly, raising the coverage further increased the overall costs of health care in the short term, although they were relatively reduced in the long term.

The two competing solutions include patching things up and application of some force. Since affordability was noted to be the main issue, the federal administration was to help cut down costs faced by families and individuals through spending extra cash. Achieved through raising directly the level of available subsidies, increasing the maximum point at which the income of the subsidies is reduced or both or offer more generous subsidies to insurance companies, to avoid prices rise. Also, raising the fines for people who fail to purchase the insurance since that is a lawful responsibility. Failure of an individual to voluntarily pay the fine makes the government to extract compensation through deducting the required cash from a federal-income-tax refund (Kantarjian 25-28).

Patching things up is preferable compared to application of force. As such, everyone in the “patching things up” resolution will remain covered irrespective of their economic status and be able to enjoy their right to better healthcare.

The state governments regulate and licence healthcare facilities and healthcare professionals. Additionally, both the state and local governments regulate hospital prices through setting specific hospital rates as well as purchasing services needed by healthcare providers. The federal government performs its roles in health care as directed by the constitution. Therefore, its main role is to establish conditions necessary for funds allocation to various regional as well as territorial governments (Jones, Katharine, and Jonathan 97-137).

The branches of federal government include the legislative referred to as the Congress responsible for law formulation, Executive overseen by the president and responsible for law enforcement and lastly, the judiciary which comprises of the Supreme Court and the 9 Justices who interpret the formulated law conferring to the Constitution (Jones, Katharine, and Jonathan 97-137).





Works Cited

Patel, Kant, and Mark E. Rushefsky. "Healthcare politics and policy in America." Public Integrity 17.1 (2014): 94-96.

Jones, David K., Katharine WV Bradley, and Jonathan Oberlander. "Pascal's Wager: health insurance exchanges, Obamacare, and the Republican dilemma." Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 39.1 (2014): 97-137.

Kantarjian, Hagop M. "The Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, 3 years later: A reality check." Cancer 123.1 (2017): 25-28.