Obamacare Healthcare system

Introduction

A Healthcare system is an integral sector in both developing and developed countries. Most states are always determined in enhancing the quality of their health services in order to enhance the health of their citizens and consecutively promote their economic developments. Moreover, most countries employ numerous strategies of financing their health care systems, including taxation, donor funding, health insurance contributions or even out of pocket (user pays) strategy. This paper pays high attention to the analysis of the main purpose of ObamaCare, and the provisions that have made most Americans to negate this health care reform.

ObamaCare (Affordable Care Act), is a law in the United States that was enacted in 2010 with the aim of reforming the American health care system (Marcovici, 2013). The main focus of this health reform is enhancing the quality of the American health care and health insurance, providing more Americans with affordable and accessible health insurance, and reducing the rate of health care spending through making health services available to the Americans who cannot afford insurance. Moreover, ObamaCare aims at regulating the health insurance industry through prohibiting rescissions of their policies. For example, currently no any American who can be denied health care coverage from these health insurance industries due to minor mistakes such as those that occur during application (Amadeo, 2014). This was a common practice before the enactment of this law. Additionally, this act allows parents to include their children in their health insurance plans.

In addition, the act allows Americans to receive free preventive services, and this helps to improve their health, and also to lower their health care spending. Consecutively, Americans who cannot afford health insurance are added to Medicaid, while those who fail to qualify for the expanded Medicaid and their income are below 400% of the poverty level are entitled to receive tax credits (Marcovici, 2013). Furthermore, ObamaCare allows people with existing health insurances to still keep them.

However, this health reform has numerous provisions that upset most Americans. For example, ObamaCare stipulates that health plans that to be exchanged in the online marketplaces must meet ten essential health benefits. This provision is making health plans of most individuals who have private health insurance to be cancelled since they do not meet these essential health benefits (Marcovici, 2013). Consecutively, ObamaCare health reform outlines that Americans would be provided with free preventive care and testing, rather than waiting for curative care. These additional tests such as cholesterol and cancer screening tests raise the overall health care costs in the short-term (Amadeo, 2014).

Consecutively, the federal government requires all Americans to purchase insurance by 31st 2014, failure to which taxes are levied to those who fail to purchase the insurance and also do not qualify for Medicaid. For example, a tax of 1% is deducted from their income in this year, 2% of income by 2015, and 2.5% by 2016 (Amadeo, 2014). Moreover, in 2013, these taxes were raised on individuals earning incomes above the threshold (these Americans pay a total of 2.35% on incomes above $200,000). These provisions have made most Americans to oppose the Act, and numerous groups are striving to repeal this it.

Conclusion

It is, therefore, evident that ObamaCare has numerous benefits to the Americans and to the federal government. I think this is the best health Act since it focuses on improving the health of Americans, reducing health disparities, and also reducing individual and the government`s overall health care spending. However, many Americans, especially high-income earners oppose it since it extracts more money from their incomes.

References

Amadeo, K., (2014). ObamaCare Pros and Corns. Retrieved from, http://useconomy.about.com/od/healthcarereform/a/Obamacare-Pros-And-Cons.htm

Marcovici, M. (2013). The Obamacare Case: Where will the new Healthcare system lead to ?. Norderstedt: Books on Demand.