Obama’s Health Care Reform
Obama’s Health Care Reform Building the universal health care system is one of the campaign promises of the Obama administration. Health care occupies a special place on public finance; it’s different with other goods markets in the daily life. It’s one of the important issues for the government, which associated with people’s life and death. People have high quality health care is a right of all people and should provide as a public service. People got their health insurance from the working companies, the government, or the insurance companies.
The health care reform is the large part in Barack Obama’s presidency. On March. 23rd, 2010, finally the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act became law. Obama wants to use health care reform to stimulates the economy in the short run, but also reduce the deficit problem in the long run. This health care reform is the most important transition for the US. As we known US is the only developed countries which doesn’t have universal health coverage, it has more than 40 millions who don’t have health care insurance, also some family can’t afford the high health insurance cost.
Also the public funds for the health care are also high; the US has the high cost health care but inefficient operation system. Now the aging problem become more serious, it has more retirees, the elders need more health care, and this increases the pressure of the health care insurance, increase the cost of the health care; also some technique widely used caused the expenditure increase… The Obama’s health care plan quickly increase the number of people who have health care insurance by spending money upfront.
The Act includes the health insurance providers are mandated to accept person, charging them the same rate as individuals without conditions; extend the coverage, provides more subsidies to the poor people to get the insurance, provide affordable health coverage for all Americans, no matter that are rich or poor; people have choice to select their insurance and doctors, it aims to eliminate some worst practices of the insurance company; reduce the cost and make health insurance more effective.
The US would keep the employee-based health insurance to cover most Americans, also create a public insurance system for people who do not have insurance. The employers have to pay into the system for the employees or provide health care insurance as good as the federal system. Also individuals would pay into the public system, the government would give subsidy to lower the cost and make them affordable for the low-level class.
As a family, 38% think that the life would be better off, 43% think that there’s no change; As the whole country, we find that 59% think the country will do better after health care reform, 19% think that there would be no change after reform, 12% think their life would be worse off. So to the whole country, most of people support the reform. Actually, this reform brings the US many changes. To the whole US citizen, it extends coverage through mandated. The health care plan will provide affordable and efficient health insurance coverage for most Americans.
So people who in the middle-level class or low-level class have ability to join into this health care plan. They all have right to get high quality health care. US expand the Medicaid range, give subsidy insurance premium to someone were poverty; creating a “national health insurance exchange”, it’s control by the government and sell insurance to people who don’t have health insurance; As shown in the graph, using the health care plan, the share of the population with health insurance coverage would increase to 93. 3% in 2019, spend about 20. 9% GDP on health care, means that government care more about people’s health.
Change the US health care system to lower cost but high quality system. Obama put forward that “antitrust laws to prevent insurers from overcharging physicians for malpractice insurance. ” This not only reforms the medical malpractice system, regulate the insurance company, but also improve the efficiency of the whole system, improve patient safety. The most important part of Obama’s policy is make investment in health information technology, this strategy nor only improve the health care quality, also reduce the cost in long run society. He provides a competitive insurance market to promote more efficient and more competition.
Promoting prevention and strengthening public health. In previous health care plan, less than one in twenty five goes for prevention. Obama’s notion of the health care plan is “to create the conditions and opportunities that allow and encourage Americans to adopt healthy lifestyles. ” Prevention is the national priority, providing opportunities to have healthy lifestyle and keep disease away. .. For example, have more primary care provider and disease prevention program, established National Prevention, Health Promotion… these federal agencies would help to build good promotion and prevention for the country.
The government provides special funds for promotion and prevention; this would improve the quality of health care, improve the public health strategy and develop the new technology; provide new prevention technology information and regular screening for people…government provide such services to prevent disease by healthy lifestyle. The reform not only affects the health care, but also the economy. The most important impact on industry is the insurance industry.
As the demand and for insurance increase because the regulation on employers, also the supply decrease the price is low due to the regulation, this would decrease the cost of health insurance. Recent years, insurance industry is overhead, by this health care reform, it reduces the overhead status and reduces the competition in this industry. Obama’s plan regulate the insurance industry by providing new purchasing pools, standards the health care package, reducing expenses, promoting competition…without the reform, government spending on Medicare and Medicaid is unsustainable, also raising during years, by this, the family save a lot.
The reform has regulation on employers should provide health insurance to the employees. Also to some small business, the government provide special subsidy fund to help them build the health care plan… Obama’s plan tries to overhaul the previous health care system. He stands as the patient, the health care provider, employers, employees, government… attempt to change aspect from different person’s opinion. This reform changes the current health care system and affects the economy, to build a universal health care system. It has variety advantages, but also it has some problems.
Like government require employees to provide employers health insurance if they don’t have. To employers, this is not good news, basically, this increase their cost of hiring employers, and means that they should hire less people by the same amount spending. Also American is a democratic state; people have their own right to choose what they want. Obama’s opinion is build the universal health care system, but realization way is force all people to buy health insurance, people lost their right; at the same time, they should provide personal information to the insurance company, including their habits.
The most important is government power expansion to the health insurance; Americans lost their own medical decision, the decision power transfers to the government. Also there’s problem whether the cost containment strategies going to support this universal health cares system in long run… Now it’s hard to say the future of this health care reform, weather is good to public, or have some problem, time would tell us the truth. According to the short term, the reform is good for Americans and the economics also good for the people who cannot afford the insurance.
It has positive impact on the society, become one of a big jump in the history. Citation: 1. http://www. calpoly. edu/~efisher/Econ%20464/NicoleWallen%20Senior%20Project. pdf 2. http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Health_care_reform_in_the_United_States 3. http://healthpolicyandmarket. blogspot. com/2008/03/detailed-analysis-of-barack-obamas. html 4. http://www. bing. com/images/search? q=health+care+obama+plan&FORM=BIFD
