During his first term, President Barack Obama enacted the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), also known as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or Obamacare (Wikipedia Contributors). Since being enacted, Obamacare has impacted the healthcare industry in many ways. Though several merits of Obama’s legacy bill have been hotly contested, there is little room to argue that it has not resulted in higher out-of-pocket costs for the middle-class American. (Thesis)It is for this reason that I believe Obamacare should be reformed in order to make healthcare truly affordable. Obamacare expanded coverage to millions of previously uninsured people through the expansion of Medicaid (Garfield et al. 1). In other words, Obamacare has increased …show more content…
The so-called “Cadillac Tax” scheduled to go into effect in 2018 will penalize employers who provide employees with health plans that come at a higher total-cost, which is typically paid for largely by the employer as a benefit (Murphy).This means that the employer will be forced to provide a cheaper policy (with higher deductibles and/or lower coverage amounts), or pay a 40 percent tax on the plan, effectively stripping the employee of more benefits. Once again, this further burdens those that it is intended to help. It can be argued that Obamacare has accomplished the mission it set out for. The rate of uninsured has dropped from 13.3 percent in 2013 to 9.1 percent in 2014 (Murphy).While this is undeniable, what these numbers do not reveal is that while more people are insured, more are underinsured and paying for insurance that they cannot actually afford to use. This idea is reflected in a study by the Commonwealth Fund, which showed that 40 percent of patients whose deductibles equaled five percent or more of their annual income reported going without needed medical services (Murphy).If the idea of the ACA is to provide everyone with affordable care, then it is not only failing, but also hurting those it is intended to help by further burdening them