Health Care Reform: Obamacare (Essay Sample)

Obamacare (Health Care Reform)
Name
Institution
Obamacare (Health Care Reform)
The Obamacare Policy
oThe Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) usually knwn as ObamaCare is an Act that was enacted in 2010. It is a reform to the health insurance sector and the US healthcare industry. The Act requires all American citizens to have a health insurance by the year 2014 or pay a penalty of $95 annually for an individual. The policy also requires that firms with an employee capacity of 50 or more employed on a full time basis to provide coverage. The Act provides the fundamental legal protections that have been missing for a long time – A near-universal coverage and assurance of access to inexpensive health insurance. Its full implementation will see the number of uninsured people in the U.S. reduce significantly. The policy is expected to provide 94% health coverage of the total U.S. population and increase Medicaid registration by at least 15 million people.
Obamacare requires all US citizens to buy a private health plan, be exempted, or pay 1-2% of their taxable income. Those who cannot afford insurance plans will be entitled to Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, or be assisted through tax credits. Most citizens will retain their employer-based coverage while the low and middle-income earners will be in a position to afford federally managed and subsidized coverage through online health insurance exchanges (ObamaCareFacts). The exchanges are online insurance marketplaces run by federal organizations where individuals and small businesses can buy inexpensive quality health insurance. Regardless of what one pays, Obamacare policy enhances the health care sector greatly including the lowest standards that insurers must cover.
According to CBO report, the cost of Obamacare is estimated to be about $1.1 trillion in a period of 10 years. The policy will be funded through federal budget cuts and government funding. This includes the 0.9% Medicare tax, cuts to wasteful expenditure, tax on insurance companies and unearned income tax.
History of the Obamacare Policy and related Policies
The Obamacare policy concept dates back to 1989 when the Conservative Heritage Foundation made a proposal to substitute single-payer healthcare to an individual mandate. In 1993, President Clinton proposed a bill to reform the health care system but if failed. The bill proposed to mandate employers to give their workers health insurance coverage via regulated marketplace. The Republican on the other hand was proposing another plan whereby individuals would purchase insurance premiums but not the employers and had a penalty for non-cooperation as well as federal subsidization in state-based purchases.
In 2006, a cover extension bill was adopted in the state of Massachusetts. The bill proposed both individual obligation and insurance exchange. In 2007, the Health American bill was proposed but it died in the committee level. The bill proposed both individualized mandate and state-based controlled marketplace. The Act enacted by the Congress between 2009 and 2010 had a lot of resemblance to the 2007Act and took the design of Massachusetts health care enactment.
A Description of the Obamacare Policy as it currently exists
The Obamacare policy provides a systematic health insurance market transformation framework through shared responsibility and by eliminating discriminating practices. The policy prohibits insurers to deny coverage or set rates based on health related factors. According to the policy, each state will set up an Exchange to help persons and undersized employers to get coverage. The Obamacare policy extends eligibility for Medicaid to lower income people and presumes government responsibility for much of the expansion expense. It establishes an improved federal support for the Children Health Insurance Program and simplifies the Medicaid enrollment. From 2014, the policy entitles all children and adults with family incomes of up to 133% FPL for Medicaid (Responsible Reform, p. 3).
The Obamacare policy provides a framework for investment in order to improve the quality of health care service delivery and to support research. The policy requires establishment of a new Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation for researching, developing, and expanding innovative payment and delivery provisions. The policy creates a new program that promotes community health teams in order to increase coordinated community based health care accessibility. The policy establishes a new interagency prevention council that is responsible in the promotion of health policies and creation of a national prevention and health promotion strategy. The Act establishes Prevention and Public Health Investment Fund that will to enhance prevention and public health. The policy mandates the HHS secretary to offer funds for studies in public health services to determine the best prevention mechanisms.
The policy creates a national commission for reviewing health care workers and their expected requirements. The policy also encourages innovations in health personnel training, recruitment, and retention. The policy reauthorizes the Centers of Excellence initiative for minority aspirants for health careers and extends scholarship for disadvantaged students who obligate to work in medically underserved locations. The policy also provides a Primary Care Extension Program to train and give technical help to primary care givers on evidence based therapies, preventive medicine, and management of chronic diseases. The Obamacare policy establishes new requirements for the provision of information to the public on health systems and fighting fraud and abuse both in the public and private programs (Responsible Reform, p. 5). The policy requires that manufacturers of drugs, medical devices, and biological supplies to report any gifts and transfer of other things made to a physician or training hospital. The policy also requires that skilled nursing facilities and nursing facilities under Medicare and Medicaid to avail information on their ownership.
The Obamacare policy provides a process under which FDA will give license to a product that is revealed as interchangeable to an authorized biological product – reference product. The policy provides a more and inexpensive medicine to children and undeserved population through the 340B program and it is extended to rural referral and certain children hospitals. The policy creates a new, voluntary, self-funded long term insurance program and the CLASS Independence Benefit Plan specifically for buying society assistance services and support by persons with functional constraints.
The Obamacare policy introduces a new tax exercise of 40% on insurers and plan administrators for any health cover with an annual premium that is beyond the threshold of $8500 for individual cover and $23000 for family cover. The tax exercise is applicable to self-insured plans and the ones sold in the group market and do not apply to those sold in individual markets. The policy also requires employers to disclose the worth of the benefits availed to each employee’s health insurance coverage.
The stated Goals and Objectives of the Obamacare Policy
One of the goals is to improve the quality, efficiency, and accountability of the healthcare sector. The Act aims at streamlining the healthcare sector by changing the plan of healthcare norms and enhancing health information transparency. The Act establishes a number of initiatives to achieve this goal. The Institute for Comparative Clinical Effectiveness Research promotes identification of the best and efficient way for the delivery of health care to various patients in the population. The Act emphasizes the need to gather information on health and health care differences to enable US assess its progress in health care provisions. The Act has set the required standards for health insurers that offer premiums to both individualized and small-group markets.
To reform the health insurance and attain near-universal coverage through shared responsibility. The Act made the health coverage a legal anticipation to the US citizens. It reinforces the previous insurance coverage and creates new and affordable health care insurance market for people and families lacking affordable employer cover or other minimum forms of coverage such as the Medicare and Medicaid. The Act reorganizes the Medicaid to cover all people with an income of less than 133% of the poverty level and streamlines enrollment.
Another goal is to make the fundamental health care easily reachable to the medically ‘underserved’ people. Approximately 60 million people are regarded as medically underserved because of their health high risk and lack of enough primary health care personnel. To counter this, the Act provides a mechanism for the extension of neighborhood health centers and the National Health Service Corps to double the patients served.
The hidden Goals and Objectives of the Obamacare Policy
The Obamacare policy is meant to bring equity in the healthcare system. This is through subsidizing insurance coverage for those who cannot afford it. In the same case, companies with larger employee base are expected to pay for their employees’ coverage. In this regard, the federal government will subsidize only those who require the help. The revenue used to fund the policy comes from taxes thereby balancing income distribution.
Business with fewer than 25 workers gets tax credits that cover up to 35% of workers premiums in 2011 and 50% from 2013. These are incentives to the firms and help them grow at a faster rate. This is an effort to redistribute resources to individuals in low-income line.