Why is the Affordable Care Act good?
There is a strong logical argument for why we need the individual mandate. People with pre-existing conditions couldn't get insurance and were getting left without coverage at all, sometimes even resulting in their deaths. A lot of pain and suffering was also resulting from people with existing conditions not being able to get insurance at an affordable price. So we had to force insurance companies to sell policies to anyone, not just healthy people. Of course, if we just did that, people would milk the system, waiting till they needed insurance and then purchasing a policy. Then nobody could afford it. So to keep people from milking the system we had to fine people who refuse to purchase health insurance when they don't need it. That's called the individual mandate. There was also a major problem shopping for health insurance. Insurance companies were charging people double, triple what they were paying out in claims and abusing consumers. The ACA requires that 80% of premium dollars must be spent on actual healthcare costs, leaving only 20% for profits and running the insurance company. The exchanges give people a central place to go to compare plans side by side, further increasing competition and keeping prices down.
Affordable Care Act?? What do you think?
I think health care reform was something we sorely needed, but since the Republican Party fell into the minority and became obsessed with obstructing everything, the reform is riddled with bad policies that need to be fixed. Unfortunately, the Republican Party would rather not do anything about the bad policies and exploit their existence to justify undoing health care reform altogether, not because it's in the American people's best interests but because it's in their own political interests.
Is the affordable care act in danger?
the ACA is essentially a failure. it rearranged the deck chairs on the titanic so to speak. it took away healthcare insurance from 12 million middle class workers and gave it to 12 million 'sick' people with pre-existing conditions. the assertion that it "enrolled 11 million additional people without prior insurance" is true but pertains to mostly new Medicaid enrollees only mostly healthy youngsters with little medical need. it otherwise failed to address exploding costs, waste, medical-legal quagmire, access to care, or any improvement in healthcare outcomes.the prior system was broken and we needed healthcare payment reform but the ACA is just a particularly poor first step.
What's a summary of the Affordable Care Act?
While the ACA has helped many people obtain insurance who were previously excluded, the act has done too little to control costs or minimize administrative costs. It has not lessened the dependence on emergency rooms because the deductibles and co-pays are still a barrier to care for too many. It has not remedied the cause and effect of care connected with employment and medical bankruptcies.In case you are unaware, the U.S. pays more than twice the cost for care than any other industrialized nation with universal, comprehensive care and is not covering everyone or achieving the same outcomes in terms of indicators such as infant mortality and life expectancy.Government controlled by corporations gave us the ACA, a huge gift to insurance companies, just like Medicare Part D was a gift from the Bush Administration to the pharmaceutical companies. But we don't need insurance, we need CARE.The cost of insurance and dealing with all the required paperwork is a cancer on the American body that if excised, would give incredible energy to our economy providing many new jobs. Employers would be able to determine the cost to them with accuracy that is not increased and negotiated annually with a for-profit company that adds no value to medical care.You will find that ER doctors, oncologists, pediatricians and primary care providers are the most supportive of HR 676, Improved and expanded Medicare for All that would cover medical, dental, eye, ear and mental health care. It would be publicly funded, privately delivered care by non-profits. There should be no profit in people's pain.Visit www.healthcare-now.org, www.pnhp.org, and wndavis.blogspot.com for facts you won't hear/see from the corporate controlled media. My blog lists some small easy books explaining what we can and must do with our healthcare system that countries that we have to compete with in the world markets have been doing for decades.
What are the Pros and Cons of the Affordable Care Act?
It makes heathcare cheaper for baby boomers. con, it uses middlemen in capitalism called insurance companies.
Is the Affordable Care Act affordable right now, and will it compromise the quality of health care?
It's hard to say for sure, because what Obama has tried to do has been diluted down so much by vested interests (especially the insurance companies) that the overall outcome is not clear to me.But to the extent I understand it, most things I see in the proposal will wind up lowering the overall cost of health care in the long run.Now remember - I am talking about the cost of health care overall in the U.S., not how much financial burden each of various entities will bear. So it might be more costly to certain branches of government, and less to the insurance companies. One thing for sure - it will drive down revenue to hospitals and the income of doctors (in spite of which, as a physician, I support it, even though it is far from my idea of a perfect plan).As for quality, this is again an unknown. Americans like to think of everything in terms of "systems" and "mechanisms" and such, but the reality is that it will depend on whether the resultant health care situation is the product of 10 dogs pulling on a piece of meat (every special interest will fight every other, in the good old American way), or a rational, careful, thoughtful balance of quality and cost (ah ... those terrible Europeans!).There is absolutely no doubt that we in the U.S. currently pay for lots of care that has never been shown to be effective - and may even be harmful to health. So cutting costs does not necessarily mean lowering quality.Keep in mind, we have various versions of centralized health care already in place. The largest single medical system in the U.S. is the VA, which provides great care at a fraction of the price of the private market. And HMO's like Kaiser are known to have generally a very high standard of care.And having family in Canada, I can tell you that their system is perfectly fine - nothing at all like the hysterical description of it you sometimes hear about in the media.