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Affordable Care Act Essay

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The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was passed in March 2010 to deal with America's preexisting medical crisis (pg. 682). Before the ACA there were two main factors leading to the health care crisis, "the increasing cost of health care and the failure to deliver a decent minimum of health care to everyone in need of it" (pg. 693). Furthermore, the cost of health care continued to rise but unfortunately, the health of Americans did not match this trend (pg. 693). Also, because health care used to be tied to employment many people went uninsured because they didn't have employment or because the cost of an employee's insurance was too high (pg. 687). If a person had employment and was able to pay, he or she could still be turned away due to a pre-existing condition (pg. …show more content…

In addition, before the ACA Medicare and Medicaid were only for those who were either extremely poor or very old (pg. 686). Eventually, the ACA was developed to solve these issues. The goal of the ACA was to increase the amount of Americans insured by removing the idea that people could be denied insurance due to a preexisting condition (pg. 690). Also, for those who did not buy insurance, a tax penalty would be imposed (pg. 684). Continuing, a marketplace was developed so that people could buy the type of insurance that they want, while also spreading the burden and making costs more affordable (pg. 685). Not only would a marketplace be created, 22 states were part of a Medicaid expansion that mandated that everyone under a certain income threshold would be eligible for Medicaid (pg. 686). Finally, ACA wanted to expand drug benefits, have free preventative care, make those who earn more pay more, eliminate cancellations for illness, and destroy lifetime benefit caps (pg. 689-691). I currently, do not have a political view on health care because this assignment was my first deep look into the health care system. I typically don't worry about health care because my parents still take care of it for

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