Obama Care Free Essays

One of the biggest topics in the United States this year has been ObamaCare. The cost of health care has been skyrocketing for years, making it unaffordable for many people. The people who cannot afford it wind up without any health insurance at all and the cost of caring for them when they are sick gets passed on to all Americans in the form of higher insurance premiums. We will write a custom essay sample on Obama Care or any similar topic only for you Order Now The Affordable Care Act was made to alleviate this problem. The official name for â€Å"ObamaCare† is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. ObamaCare was signed into law to reform the health care industry. The Act was signed by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010 and was signed by the Supreme Court on June 28, 2012. Even though the Act was passed over a year ago, people were just allowed to apply for ObamaCare on October 1st of this year. People can only apply for ObamaCare from October 1st of 2013 to March 31, 2014. Some aspects of ObamaCare will take until 2022 to be in effect. After you apply and are accepted for ObamaCare, you will have an alternative to private insurance. The plan for ObamaCare is not to replace private insurance, it is just an alternative for people who can’t afford private insurance. The main goal of ObamaCare is to be able to give more Americans access to affordable, as well as quality health insurance and to reduce the growth in health care spending in the United States. ObamaCare does not replace private insurance, so if you have coverage that you like you can keep it. There are a few rights, benefits, and protections that benefit Americans. Some of these rights are allowing children to stay on parents plans until age 26, insurance companies are not allowed to drop you when you are sick, insurance companies will be prohibited from making unjustified rate hikes. ObamaCare has done away with life time and annual limits and requires all insurers to cover people with pre-existing conditions. Another added benefit is that all insurance plans are required to cover preventative services such as yearly check ups, immunization’s and screenings with no out of pocket costs. There is a Tax credit to subsidize costs for low to middle class Americans. There is also a Tax credit for small businesses. Both of these credits are to start in 2014. For large employers who provide full time employees with health insurance, an Employer Mandate goes into effect in 2015. Individual mandates go into effect in 2014. If individuals do not have health insurance they will have to pay a fee or get an exemption, based on their income. The fee for not having insurance is paid through your Federal Income Tax Return. A lot of employers in the United States have decided not to insure there employees, which has forced a lot more people to find there own individual health plan. ObamaCare created marketplaces for state health insurances. They are also known as exchanges. Exchanges are where families, individuals, and small businesses can shop for subsidized insurance. You can also find out if you qualify for Medicare or Medicaid in the marketplace. Individuals making less than forty six thousand dollars per year or less than ninety five thousand as a family could be eligible for low cost or free insurance. Medicare is not part of the marketplace health insurance, they advise that if you have Medicare, that you should keep it. It is also supposed to help close the Medicare Part D donut hole, as well as give seniors access to cheaper prescriptions. A movement to defund ObamaCare recently lead to a Government Shutdown on October 1st through October 18th 2013. House Republicans were refusing to pass a budget unless it included defunding, delaying, or repealing parts of the Act. Eventually the stalemate ended when the republicans dropped their demands. While the republicans stubbornly held firm to their ideals, the entire country suffered. The biggest issue with ObamaCare so far has been the website. When people go onto the website to apply for ObamaCare, the website freezes and crashes. When you call the help line you can not get through, and when you do get through, you get referred back to the website. If not enough people apply for ObamaCare because they are frustrated with the website, than the entire system could collapse due to insufficient funding. It only works if everybody pays into it. Another issue with the website is that they overpaid for it to be built. The Government paid five hundred million dollars for the website to be built when they could have paid a lot less for a better job. The Government also used a Canadian to company design the website and not an American company. Many people are upset with the governments choice. In conclusion only time will tell if the program is a success or a failure. Many of the ideas and principles of ObamaCare sound great but the practical implementation of the program is problematic. I personally do not know if ObamaCare will work, but I hope it will because private healthcare is very expensive and getting harder and harder to pay for. How to cite Obama Care, Papers Obama Care Free Essays OBAMA CARE Obama Care and health care reform is the same thing. The official name for â€Å"Obama Care† is the Patient Protection and the Affordable Care Act, a bill signed into law to reform the health care industry. Some aspects of Obama Care health care reform are already enacted. We will write a custom essay sample on Obama Care or any similar topic only for you Order Now The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was signed into law March 23, 2010. Over 100 million Americans have already benefited from the new health care law. The Obama Care insurance requires that all insurance plans cover preventive services and stops insurance companies from dropping you when you are sick, as well as offering a number of other reforms and protections. Obama Care’s goal is to provide affordable health insurance for all US citizens and to reduce the growth in health care spending. Obama Care does not replace private insurance, Medicare, or Medicaid. The Fact is that Obama Care gives 47 million women access to preventive health services and makes it illegal to charge women different rates than men. Obama Care also gives seniors access to cheaper drugs, free preventive care, reforms Medicare Advantage, and closes the Medicare Part D. The AARP agrees, costs won’t rise because of Obama Care, if anything, the improvements to the system will decrease the average cost of health care for seniors. Obama Care also states that â€Å"affordable insurance† means that you pay no more than 8% of your annual income on insurance. Obama Care ensures that there are no out-of-pocket costs on patients receiving mammograms and colonoscopies which are two of the most widely used forms of preventive health care. Obama Care’s new Medicare Value-Based Purchasing Program means hospitals can lose or gain up to 1% of Medicare funding based on a quality v. quantity system. Hospitals are graded on a number of quality measures related to treatment of patients with heart attacks, heart failures, pneumonia, certain surgical issues, re-admittance rate, as well as patient satisfaction. Obama Care Mandates that those who choose not to purchase insurance will have to pay a tax â€Å"penalty† unless they qualify for an exemption. Exemptions from Obama Care’s tax â€Å"penalty† mandate are available to a number of Americans. The mandate exemptions cover a variety of people, including: members of certain religious groups and Native American tribes; undocumented immigrants (who are not eligible for health insurance subsidies under the law); incarcerated individuals; people whose incomes are so low they don’t have to file taxes (currently $9,500 for individuals and $19,000 for married couples); and people for whom health insurance is considered unaffordable (where insurance premiums after employer contributions and federal subsidies exceed 8% of family income). Starting Oct 1st, 2013 the Obama Care online health insurance exchange is where all Americans can buy affordable quality health insurance. Those under the 400% FPL and employers will be able to use subsidies to purchase plans at an average of 60% less than they pay now. The Obama Care Insurance Exchanges Online Market Place are implemented in 2014 health insurance premiums is projected to drop dramatically for many Americans. Low-income Americans will enjoy more Obama Care pros than cons. Since Obama Care works on a sliding scale most low income Americans, especially those without insurance, will see nothing but benefits. Medicaid expansion will cover over 15 million previously uninsured low-income individuals and families below the 133% FPL mark. All Americans (including Congress) will be able to buy their health insurance through the exchange as long as they are above the poverty level (those Americans will be covered under Medicaid expansion). Anyone (except congress) can opt out and keep their current health insurance, pay a tax, purchase private insurance or stay with their private health insurance company. The cons of Obama Care for low-income Americans are that some states will have the option of opting out of coverage for their poorest, despite 100% federal funding for the first year and 90% thereafter. In some cases rejecting Medicaid Expansion isn’t just about saving money. It’s actually a politically driven move to â€Å"break† Obama Care. The opt-out is projected to leave 2 to 3 million low-income Americans without coverage. Some State reps are trying to â€Å"break† Obama Care. It’s no secret a portion of the GOP wants to repeal Obama Care, they just so happen to have a strategic plan that includes â€Å"breaking† the Exchanges and Medicaid Expansion. Obama Care isn’t just going to go away, but while the battle goes on Americans continue to be caught in the crossfire. It’s also worth noting that the amount of uninsured Medicaid eligible Americans differs from State to State. Obama Care is projected to cost $1. 1 trillion over the next ten years, and in order for the program to work as intended this is going to include funding from the tax payers and from the States. However, the end result of Obama care spending is a $200 billion dollar reduction of the deficit over the next decade, states also receive between 90 – 100% of funding for most Obama Care related programs they set up. A few states including Nevada and Michigan have done studies that show how the States can save billions with Obama Care. Health Insurance companies stand to make billions, despite a loss on profit per plan, since they will be insuring millions of new Americans. In conclusion the Obama Care health care program will benefit all Americans from the bottom of the barrel to the top dogs in the congress. It will also help the US repair the economic deficit. The states that are trying to opt-out need to see the benefit of this plan. They are putting too much Infosys on money and not enough focus on the well-being of the American people. Clarence Boyd 16 April 2013 How to cite Obama Care, Papers