The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as the ACA or Obamacare, was passed into law in 2010. Since then, the ACA has faced court challenges, ongoing criticism and repeated attempts to have it repealed. It has also enabled millions of Americans to access health care services that were previously out of reach. Changes like the individual and employee mandates and the greatly expanded numbers of Americans with access to health care can be seen as pros or cons depending on who is paying for the changes.
The Individual Mandate
One of the most controversial elements of the ACA is the individual mandate. This requirement is an attempt to fix a core problem with health insurance. In a voluntary system, healthy people won’t sign up for coverage because they don’t need much health care; meanwhile, people with high health care costs will enroll in insurance coverage. In this scenario, insurance companies can’t spread their risk because they won’t have a diverse pool of insures. The individual mandate of the ACA requires everyone to have health insurance or pay a penalty when filing taxes. In theory, this fee will motivate everyone to sign up for health insurance, obtain preventative care and be covered in case of an emergency. However, many Americans feel it is unfair to be forced to pay a penalty, especially if they find it difficult to pay for insurance.
Related resource: Top 10 Online Master’s in Health and Human Services Degree Programs
The Employer Mandate
Under the ACA, business with 50 or more full-time employees or their equivalent must provide health insurance in their benefits package. This lets workers at non-profit organizations, family-owned business and other small companies gain access to health insurance subsidized by their employers. For administrators and business owners, it means a sharp rise in business costs. Not all employees benefit, either, as organizations may lower hours so employees don’t qualify for benefits or offer low-quality, high-cost coverage plans that employees don’t want.
Increased Health Care Coverage
Between 15 and 20 million Americans gained health insurance because of Obamacare. Those individuals benefit from increased access to medical services. In the long run, their communities also benefit because those individuals will have better preventative care and need fewer expensive emergency services in the future. Of course, that increase in health coverage required an increase in taxes to fund it, which was disliked by many fiscal conservatives and individuals who saw their tax burdens rise.
Pre-Existing Conditions Are Covered
Before the ACA was in effect, insurance companies could refuse to cover individuals with pre-existing conditions. If you were diagnosed with a long-term illness and then started a new job that provided health insurance, you could be excluded from that insurance policy because you had an illness before enrolling in it. Obamacare banned insurance companies from refusing to enroll individuals with pre-existing conditions. This increased the cost of insurance for everyone.
Obama’s plan to provide health insurance to all Americans has pros and cons. Your perspective on whether the Affordable Care Act is a positive or negative change will depend on how you’ve been personally affected by it.
