Obama Care Act Pros And Cons

The Affordable Care Act In 2010, the Obama administration signed a law that ensures that every American citizen has access to affordable healthcare. The Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare, is a law that offers people a discounted government healthcare program and assists people by lowering the cost if a citizen cannot afford it in their budget. Along with providing healthcare, the act also put restrictions on insurance companies, such as the insurance companies cannot drop or deny an individual with a preexisting medical condition. To add on, “the millions [who are] now insured [to Obamacare]” (McClester), are guaranteed coverage for a whole year, until they must enroll again for the next year. On the other hand, if a citizen

Since the Affordable Care Act increased its coverage to more patients, the effect is there is an also increase demand for doctors and nurses too. "The Association of American Medical Colleges has projected that by 2025 there will be a shortfall of between 41,100 and 90,400 doctors" (Carroll), and if things stay the way they are right now, the number will only get higher as time progresses. With costs of medical school, the field has already been shorthanded for decades, but with the addition of more covered patients, the shortage has only gone up. Dr. Beezley- Smith explains, "The already fragile workforce will face increased stress, and burden, as well as millions of hours of new paperwork that will need to be addressed because of the ACA" (Beezley-Smith). This amplified stress will directly affect the patients, and these patients will not receive customer service. In most hospitals, customer service is prioritized, but with fewer people on staff, people will be lucky to see a doctor. Under those circumstances, many hospitals cannot give the finest bedside service patients would normally get with a full staff, due to overflowing emergency rooms and limited time. Furthermore, emergency rooms could be shortened if they had more primary care doctors. The Associated Press conducted a study

Many experts, such as Johnathan Cohn of the Huffington Post, suggest that premiums would be lower without the Affordable Care Act. To start off, he explains that Obamacare is not just one huge program; There are 51 different healthcare programs, one for each state, including the District of Columbia. In some of these states insurers are not attracting enough healthy people to offset the costs of the sick, which explains why in most states the premiums are so high. Along with that, some states only have one or two insurance providers, while other states have multiple. If there is only one insurance provided, then they can raise their prices as high as they want. Right now, Alaska has the highest premium, which is a whopping $760 per month and per person ( ). Alaska is a prime example of a state having only one insurer, and it is a prime example of how the insurer has all the control. During this interview with Joey Bide from MSNBC news, both Johnathan Cohn and Avik Roy talked about the issues and discussed some possible solutions to the skyrocketing premiums. Avik Roy from the Foundation of Equal Opportunity talked about how one of the main problems is that insurance companies and the government are too involved. Both men agreed in the interview that patients should have more control of their healthcare,