The Affordable Care Act as a Tax
The Affordable Care Act should be implemented as a tax to ensure that all individuals have access to health-care coverage should they become ill or wounded. Each individual faces an unknown level of health risk, necessitating the purchase of health insurance. If all Americans are required to contribute to the ACA through taxes, a pool of funds is created. As a result, treatment becomes more cheap for each individual when compared to seeking medical care using personal income. While many Americans may perceive the move as government coercion to obtain health insurance, it actually incentivizes or encourages people to obtain the bare minimum of medical coverage. The fact that the Affordable Care Act offers different health coverage is a sign that it accommodates almost everyone in society. Therefore, the penalty encourages people to have a health care plan.
Elimination of the Free Rider Problem
Implementing the ACA as a tax also helps in eliminating the free rider problem. Most individuals would prefer to joy ride on the contribution of others, but taxation contributes to ensuring that everyone pays for the insurance. It also contributes to guaranteeing effective contribution toward the program. If the contributions are filed together with a tax return, everyone would have timely payment to the scheme and this would help in providing the necessary medical services when required.
Taxation as a Means of Reducing Public Health Expenditure
Taxation toward the Affordable Care Act is the most efficient way the government can reduce its growing public health expenditure on health. The ever-growing need for health coverage has pushed the state allocation high. The result of such increasing expense of health would increase the budget deficit, and this may significantly affect the economy and even the ability of the government to continue to offer medical services. Taxation ensures that both the unemployed and employed acquire coverage, and this reduces the allocation on health.
For-Profit Companies and Contraceptives
The Affordable Care Act should not require for-profit companies to pay for contraceptives for their employees. Such a scheme would only force them to engage in behaviors that go against their religious beliefs and rights as stipulated in the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act. Even though a company CEO is an individual whose religious belief cannot represent the religious faith of all women workers in an organization, such principles guide the company policies and therefore every employee should follow.
Furthermore, ACA requires companies to provide 20 contraceptives approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). However, most of these pills are abortive and most religious beliefs do not allow contamination of unborn babies. Therefore, it is only right for private companies not to be required to provide these pills to employees if such a move is gaining their faith. Even though women have the right to make their personal health decision independent of the organization in which they are working, such independent decisions cannot influence the company beliefs. Women who want to use contraceptives should seek private coverage and fuel the bill for themselves. Also, women working in these for-profit companies cannot still have all contraceptives approved by FDA devoid of cost-sharing.
