During the year 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama powered through his campaign with one message: change. And with that change came the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or, as it has been cleverly nicknamed, Obamacare.
In 2009, an estimated 50.2 million people out of the 312 million in the United States were left without health insurance. Pitched in 2010, Obamacare seemed like a solution for all. Unfortunately, it was not a simple solution.
When asked what he knows about Obamacare, Dean Hogan ‘17 replied, “From my point of view, it looks to be a bad idea and not working well.” On a slightly different note, Helen Shen ’18 feels that while it provides “exquisite care for American citizens, Canada still has it better.”
Most teens around the ages of twelve to sixteen know little to nothing on the subject of Obamacare. What they do know usually comes from their parents or other students that know their politics. A majority of them do not know that a nationwide healthcare policy was meant to be a good thing.
Healthcare is a tricky subject for some and confusing for most. Yet the ACA can easily be simplified to one general topic: quality, affordable healthcare for all Americans. The Republicans and Democrats, two groups that have been arguing since each party’s inception, have entered a ruthless battle over the concept, a battle that shows no sign of stopping. This idea for change has started a war that it itself cannot finish. Many Americans who have suffered greatly because of it are hereby awaiting the end of this figurative war.
The substantial cost now thrown atop millions fuels the feud that splits this country in half. Since the government cannot grant every struggling American a subsidy—a sum of money granted by the government—out of its own pocket, it has implemented a new tax nationwide. This tax could possibly add $215 billion into the federal tax revenue. Be that as it may, these subsidies do not merely reduce the cost of insurance– they shift it to someone else.
The thousand-page piece of legislation that is the Affordable Care Act is filled to the brim with elaborate details. They were intended to improve the health care situation that now tangles up the lives of many Americans. According to ObamacareFacts.com, “tens of millions of uninsured Americans now have access to affordable, high-quality health insurance.” That said, the ACA has now made it mandatory for health insurance companies to accept applicants that have a preexisting condition, no matter what the cost for the company. Due to this provision, premiums have gone up substantially for those who already have insurance.
Many will agree that while President Obama’s heart may have been in the right place, the pieces did not fall the way he had hoped. Due to subsidies and the tax reform, the amount of people paying more per month is greater than the number of people paying less. The mandate states that all businesses that have fifty or more full-time employees must provide health care for them. This has resulted in businesses cutting employee hours because of the mandate’s coming into full effect this year and the next. This authorization adds an extra cost to any business, so, naturally, they cut hours, and, with them, wages. The decreased wages gives employees little ability to provide themselves with health care, thus adding their names to the uninsured list of Americans. Small businesses may actually reduce the number of workers—increasing the unemployment rate—in order to stay below the fifty-employee minimum.
There are those who can afford health insurance and there are those who the national health care policy supports. And then there are those who do not fall in either group. As more Americans oscillate over the Obamacare-Medicaid borderline, they are consumed by the fear that they might not receive health insurance at all. In some cases, that is exactly what happens. Medicaid—a cheap, low-quality health insurance for the lower-income citizens of the US—is rarely accepted in the offices of professional doctors.
Under the Affordable Care Act, Obama has made it possible that 15.9 million more men, women, and children are now covered by this lower-income plan. And under this plan, they can have a variety of options that one could not have before the ACA came into full effect. However, states are not getting federal funding for the expansion of Medicaid and therefore, 5.7 million citizens—most being some of the nation’s poorest—are completely without coverage.
Amidst all the confusion and the debate lies a domino effect of sorts. If one person is given a subsidy, then another must be charged more. If another is charged more, then they sink deeper into debt, losing more out of their pocket than they are gaining. And as more people cross the line into Medicaid, there are less citizens paying for the health care itself. Less people paying for the policy forces it to become an underfunded project that will eventually collapse in on itself.
Americans need the help that they are not getting, and as the government continues to push this newly activated insurance policy upon them, it might become worse. If the ideas of the original plan were thoroughly enforced, then maybe everyone would be able to receive the care they need. Unfortunately, that is not the case. The greatest mystery lies in the question regarding who will wind up paying more, and who less?