Essay On Affordable Care Act

Affordable Care Act

The goal of the Affordable Care Act was to provide health care for all U.S. citizens. The idea was to increase access to health care and improve the quality and efficiency of healthcare delivery. However, there are a lot of questions of whether or not the decision to pass this act, or even the ideals it included were ethical. Jürgen Unützer and Wayne Katon at the University of Washington developed a model known as the “Collaborative Care Model”. This model showed many of the flaws of the ACA. The Psychiatric News explains that, “In this model, patients are screened for psychiatric illness in a primary-care setting, using simple rating scales. If the screen is positive, they are referred to a care manager, usually an MSW

This means that more people will be able to afford hospital fees and fees charged by doctors, more patients will be seen by doctors, and doctors are expected to spend more time with each patient to give the kind of quality care that the ACA demands. In A Rancorous Moral Matter by Ron Hamel, Ph.D. and Fr. Thomas Nairn, OFM, Ph.D., they state that, “ The mandate helps promote justice, (fair distribution of a critical social good), solidarity (the sense that we are in this together and ought to be of assistance to one another in times of need) and, ultimately, the common good (the flourishing of all members of society and of society as a whole).” (In text Citation). They believe that the Affordable Care Act and the other health care/health insurance implementations made are helping to unify our country. Additionally, the idea is shared that the ACA is helping to promote private health insurance companies. This growth in companies is believed to expand growth in the economy. The ACA also has prohibited the limitations set on health insurance by previous health care needs. People of higher risk that might cost the insurance companies lots of money, used to be denied health insurance. Insurance companies used to have the authority to screen potential clients, deny them health insurance for pre-existing

One of these were the many legislative assaults against the ACA, which are sadly still happening today. Many of the republicans in the house did not agree with the passing of the ACA and in 2015 they even voted to delay its individual mandate for a year. At the time the democrats had the 60 majority votes that they needed to pass the ACA. However, after the bill passed the Senate, Democrat Senator Ted Kennedy died and was replaced by the Massachusetts elected Republican, Scott Brown. So if the house had to make changes to the bill, they would not have the necessary number of democratic votes to pass the bill. In order to battle this issue Senate Leader, Harry Reid made a deal with Pelosi that the House would pass the Senate bill if the Senate agreed to pass a separate bill by the House that made changes to the Senate version of the ACA. The second proposed bill was known as the Reconciliation Act. The house ended up passing the ACA and their very own Reconciliation Act. The ACA was ready for the President to sign it and be put into action; however, the Senate still needed to finish the final stages of passing the Reconciliation Act from the house. The Senate, only having fifty-nine Democratic votes, declared that they could use the Reconciliation Rule, which was only supposed to be used for budget item approvals so that such items could be passed with only fifty-one votes instead of the usual