Pros And Cons Of The Affordable Care Act

Victoria Caviness

Course Introduction Assignment Picture this, it is 2017 a woman who is homeless comes into the emergency room. She is dying from a food borne illness. She had lost her job and could not pay her medical bills from her first child and could not keep up with rent so she became homeless. Flash forward they only make her stable and then transfer her to a hospital that will treat patients who do not have health insurance. This transport then causes this woman to die. So, I take the con side of this argument of universal health care. The point of view in which I will side with is the lower class. Now there are both advantages and disadvantages to the affordable care act but in this paper, I will cover the pros and cons

These include the negative impacts on Medicaid and its enrollees, and also the Independent Payment Advisory Board(IPAB). First up is Medicaid. Before Obamacare Medicaid was offered to those who did not make enough to afford private or employment based insurance. It was a good plan for those in the lower class because it offered health insurance for these families. Since Obamacare has been implemented Medicaid has gone down the toilet. According to Jeffery Singer MD (2014), One recent study found that Medicaid is not only worse than private insurance — it can be worse than having no insurance at all. Medicaid patients were 25% likelier to have an in-hospital death than those completely without health insurance.” These statistics are staggering since Obamacare was supposed to benefit all Americans and not harm them. Also, Jeffery Singer (2014) reported that most people before ACA took affect they had private health insurance. This in laymen terms means that private insurance sky rocketed so high that people had to defer to Medicaid to “afford” health insurance. The second con of Medicaid is the biasedness of the IPAB. This board basically controls the expenditures related to Medicare. Phil Roe, MD(2014) says, “In my view, the board is rationing care if the effect of their decisions is reduced access to needed care." This not only shows that this board is biased, it also proves that even on Medicare lower-class individuals will be denied important medical procedures or