Some analysts do raise concerns. Many young people could drop their ACA insurance and venture outside the markets established by the ACA. Under an executive order from President Trump, insurance companies were encouraged to establish out of ACA market plans that would be enticing to young people. While these plans do have the potential to be cheaper, it comes at a loss of quality of care. Many of these plans do not cover the same treatments that their ACA plan would otherwise cover (All Things Considered).
Individual Mandate Benefits and Fragmentation:
Obamacare pressured federal government and state governments to be more cost efficient by pushing them to make the same insurance choices that many employers have made for privately insured
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While the Obama administration argued for the mandate by utilizing traditional reasoning such as the creation of a negative externality, that analysis alone does not address the economic and moral significance of the mandate properly. With respect to the individual mandate, there needs to be a societal paradigm shift toward a Rawlsian ideal state with respect to health care. In this state, there is an equal distribution of primary social goods, and any upward movement from this baseline is justifiable so long as the result works to everyone’s advantage (with a particular focus on the less well off). While it is true some of us are predisposed to conditions or we lack preventative care, unequal distribution of health causes unequal distribution of opportunities. People are more likely to be caught in a cyclical poverty loop if they are unable to retain any after-tax income if they are unable to overcome their ailment due to lack of access to care or the inability to subsequently escape poverty because of medical expenses. Putting health on the same level of other innate abilities is important to determine the distribution of opportunities throughout society. Which begs the question, why isn’t health a collective asset? While Rawles defines collective assets to pre-birth lotteries like ability or intelligence, one …show more content…
Maryland is currently trying to create a plan to replace the ACA mandate. Washington, Minnesota, New Jersey, Vermont, District of Columbia, Washington, Rhode Island, Hawaii, Connecticut and California are publicly considering mandates similar to Maryland. The creation of minimum health standards and benefits for certain plans and the ban on charging higher premiums for pre-existing conditions were necessary to create a uniform minimum floor for health coverage. The recent actions from the Trump administration didn’t just remove the individual mandate, but also rolled back some ACA requirements to the states. This has allowed democratic states to push initiatives to continue or expand upon the ACA while red states take steps back to a pre-ACA era of health policy. As Larry Levitt, a senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation puts it, “We’re moving back to when coverage and consumer protections vary tremendously.” Many republicans want more of the ACA to become undone. Idaho has allowed insurance companies to sell insurance that does not meet the minimum standards under the ACA. Insurers can also charge higher premiums to the sick and elderly. This pushback to the states will be difficult if they want ACA standards since creating a system to track coverage and exact penalties requires significant administration and development costs. Connecticut plans on imposing