The Affordable Care Act (ACA)

President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act on March 23, 2010. This law puts in place widespread health insurance reforms that expanded out over the last 4 years and continues to change the lives of many Americans today. Health care reform has been an extensively debated topic for multiple years, and the ACA is the first effective attempt at passing a law aiming to make health care not only affordable, but accessible for all individuals. The law impacts many Americans including, children, employers, government programs which includes federal and state, health plans and private insurers, health care coverage, health care cost, and the quality of care received. The main goal of the law is to expand health care coverage, broaden Medicaid eligibility, minimize and regulate health care cost, and improve the health care delivery system. In order to improve the health care delivery there have been new consumer protections established and an increase access to affordable care.

Large populations of Americans are uninsured mainly because of the high cost of insurance. Majority of the uninsured are the low-income working families’. The adults represent a higher percentage of the uninsured than children. Before the law, you could be denied coverage or treatment because you had been sick in the past, be dropped mid-treatment for making a simple mistake on your application, hence, the Affordable Care Act was implemented into law on March 23, 2010 by President Barrack Obama to make sure that every American irrespective of their status will be insured and have full access to proper health care benefits, rights and protection(1). To understand the

The Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare or ACA, is the health reform law enacted in 2010 by Congress. The official name of this reform is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Many provisions of the law are already in effect and the rest are going to continue to develop until 2022. After a year of intense political wrangling, the health reform initiative was passed by Congress. Even though it falls short of providing universal coverage, it is unlike the Clinton proposal. The Affordable Care Act was intended to expand US citizens’ and legal residents’ access to health insurance coverage, control future costs, and improve the functioning of the healthcare delivery system. It improves access to care and balances spending through regulations and taxes. Healthcare has always been a crisis in the US and the Affordable Care Act contains hundreds of different provisions that address these aspects. The Affordable Care Act increases the quality of health insurance at an affordable price so all Americans can have access to it. In exchange, most people who can afford to obtain health coverage must by 2014 or pay a per month fee. The ACA offers Americans a number of new benefits. It sets up a Health Insurance Marketplace where we can purchase federally regulated and subsidized Health Insurance during open enrollment. It expands Medicaid to all adults in many states, as well as improving Medicare for seniors and those with long term disabilities. Obamacare expands

In 2010 the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare, was signed into act to help reform healthcare in the United States. Before and after the act was effective, many people were concerned with how it would affect our country as a whole and on an individual basis. Many people say that the ACA is helping our country and others are not so sure. The goal of the act is to give millions of uninsured Americans access to quality health care and by also making it more affordable. Although there seems to be many positives from this act, not everyone agrees that it was the greatest idea to obtain optimal health status. As many people know, children are now allowed to stay on their parents insurance until they are twenty-six years old.

The Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, is an act passed by president Barack Obama on March 23, 2010. This act, which provides affordable health insurance to Americans, was passed for three primary reasons. These reasons are to reduce the number of individuals in the United States who currently are not covered by some form of health insurance, to improve the availability and quality of existing health care programs, and to reduce the cost of health care to individuals and the government (“Patient Protection”, 2014). The Affordable Care Act has been successful in some ways, but ineffective in other ways since it was passed in March of 2010. For example, Obamacare has helped expand Medicaid and has helped those who have Medicare. However, this act has had a negative impact on the uninsured and on insurance premiums. In addition, some small businesses have benefited from this act, while others have had a negative effect. The Affordable Care Act has many pros, but it also has some cons, which is why there are still some changes and ideas that I would like to see implemented in our healthcare system.

Understanding the Affordable Care Act (ACA) can be problematic, the goal of the ACA is to address the fact that millions of Americans do not have health insurance, yet they are contributors to the health care market, consuming health care services for which they do not pay. While this may seem to be a great idea, many Americans are not really sure how they are affected by this Health Care Reform. The goal is to make health insurance affordable, secure, and reliable for all. The ACA is a minimum coverage provision, individuals are given health insurance by amending the tax code. There is an individual mandate which stipulates all non-exempt individuals must maintain a minimum level of insurance or pay a tax penalty. ACA extends Medicaid, states have to accept or they will not receive Federal funding. The act also includes an employer mandate to obtain health coverage for employees. The Affordable Care Act has changed the way health care is provided and the way individuals will participate (The Affordable Care Act Cases. (n.d.). Retrieved September 3, 2015)

The Affordable Care Act, in its time, has helped many uninsured Americans to obtain health insurance by giving them guaranteed coverage. About 20 million Americans, based on the statistics from the New York Times’s article titled “Fact Check: Trump’s Critiques of the Affordable Care Act.”, have obtained health insurance through the ACA. Dropping the uninsured rate to 11 percent by 2013 (Qiu 2017). Americans, through the ACA, were able to get health insurance even if they got sick, which inevitably happens to many. This put insurers in a place where they cannot deny coverage to people who have preexisting conditions, or their health history. Other main points that are included in Former President Obama’s Affordable Care Act is that one, it was given as an individual mandate that all U.S. Citizens and legal residents must enroll for qualifying health care or get penalized for not signing up for insurance at all. Making the fact that getting health care is mandatory is a good way to lower the insured rates and save many Americans money when the next unexpected hospital visits or illnesses come up. Another thing is that the ACA has also expanded medicaid to all non-Medicaid eligible individuals that are under the age 65 and making medicaid more federal funded based rather than a state issue. Thus helping those who could not afford

In 2010 President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) into law. ACA is pivotal legislation that had rippling effects throughout the healthcare system. The Affordable Care Act was drafted with the sole intention of expanding healthcare access across the country. Under the ACA, Americans are now mandated to purchase health insurance or face a penalty. Americans without insurance are able to get coverage by purchasing through the insurance exchange or by qualifying for Medicaid. The poverty level was raised for Medicaid and new provisions allowed single men to also qualify. Anyone that does not qualify for Medicaid would need to purchase a plan on the insurance exchange and various subsidies are available based on income level.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) extended healthcare coverage to millions of formerly uninsured individuals by expanding eligibility of Medicaid and the formation of Health Insurance Marketplaces. The ACA also included reforms to assist individuals sustain coverage and have the availability of affordable and accessible private healthcare insurance. Analysis from 2014 and early 2015 and have shown significant increases in public and private healthcare insurance coverage and have attributed the remarkable decreases of the rates of uninsured individuals from marketplace.gov and health insurance exchanges from the first year the ACA had healthcare coverage available.

This act contains a new “Patient’s Bill of Rights” granting Americans both stability and flexibility needed in order for them to make educated decisions regarding their own health care [4]. Thus, the ACA makes health care a possibility for everyone no matter what their race, religion, income or sex. It allows approximately 32 million uninsured Americans to be able to get some type of insurance coverage through a public program such as Medicaid or Medicare, through their employer or by purchasing coverage from their State's Health Insurance Marketplace [5]. It also allows young Americans to stay on their parent’s health insurance plan until the age of 26 [5]. It improves the care for seniors through expanding free preventive services programs [6] and affords crucial changes to women’s health by mandating coverage of preventive health care measures at no cost to the patient (e.g., breastfeeding supplies, pre- and post-natal care, mammograms, etc.) [7]. In addition, the ACA puts an end to abuses of insurance companies by putting into place new standards for commercial insurers, like the lifting of lifetime coverage limits and striking down pre-existing condition exclusion clauses

The Affordable care act (ACA), all so known as Obamacare, was signed into law on March 23, 2010. The ACA said that every taxpayer must have health insurance, if they have not enrolled by the deadline they will face a penalty of having to pay for not having health insurance. People were told that with the ACA that health insurance would be more affordable and for some it did but for others it changed what they already had and they can no longer afford to have insurance. Ilyma Somin wrote that because of the Commerce, Tax and the Necessary and Proper Clause because basically they say that ACA offers economic effects in some way or another (Somin, 2012).

Affordable Care Act also known as Obamacare, is a new reform that was signed by President Obama in March 2010 and major provisions went into effect in January 1st, 2014. Obama’s goal with the ACA was that “the core principle that everybody should have some basic security when it comes to their healthcare.” The ACA’s goal is to extend insurance to more than 30 million American people, by expanding Medicaid and providing federal subsidies to help lower- and middle-income buy private coverages. Another reform that is similar to the ACA is a Single Payer System that is trying to be pushed to fix the problems of the ACA such as eliminating commercial insurance.

The primary social problem that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was enacted to address was for everyone to have insurance. The goal was to make insurance accessible to everyone and decrease the number of people without health insurance. The most important provisions of the law were preventive care, birth control, and prohibit exclusion of an individual with preexisting conditions, and Medicaid expansion. They addressed these problems by covering all well visits, making birth control free, allowing people with preexisting conditions get the help they need, and expanding Medicaid for the childless adults that are poor. According to Sanger-Katz and Bui (2016), the uninsured rate has gone down but there have been some difficulties with the Medicaid

The Affordable Care Act was constructed by President Obama to help transform the health care system. The Affordable Care Act is supposed to implement a system that would reduce the health care costs. This would also improve the efficiency of procedures by eliminating the denial of coverage due to pre-existing conditions. Unfortunately, over 44 Million Americans can’t afford the cost of medical insurance, but the law grants these Americans medical insurance benefits. Before this law was in place, insurance companies could deny patients the medical attention they needed, drop their medical coverage halfway through their treatment, and have a maximum payment they prepared to pay.

The ACA requires insurers to accept all applicants, cover certain conditions, and charge the same rates despite one 's sex or pre-existing health status. There are ten provisions that make up the ACA which were to be implemented over time, from 2010 through 2020. The first provision is individual insurance, which prohibits insurers to deny coverage based on one 's pre existing health conditions. States were also required to make insurance available to children who are not insured through their families. Medicaid was also expanded to include individuals and families with an average income of thirty thousand dollars a year. This mandate will not cover those who are illegal immigrants, eligible individuals who choose to not be enrolled in medicaid, those who choose to pay the penalty, individuals whose insurance would cost more than 8% of their income, and those who live in states that opt out of the medicaid expansion.