Policy Impact on Health Care
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, popularly referred to as Obamacare is one of the most popular yet controversial healthcare policies enacted over the last decade. The health policy was introduced back in the year 2010. The aim of the policy was to extend the health insurance policy to about 15 percent of Americans who lacked health insurance. Statistics indicated that the 15 percent of Americans lacked comprehensive health insurance coverage either from the employers or from the health programs that existed at the time. These individuals were also not covered by health programs that cater for the poor and the elderly. This policy impacts all Americans. This is because it requires all individuals to take health insurance coverage, with the provision for subsidized coverage to make it affordable to almost the entire population.
Businesses with over 50 full-time employees are also required to take cover for their employees. This provision will come into effect in 2016, which is meant to give businesses enough time to put in place proper guidelines to ensure they comply with the policy. There are a number of concerns related to Obamacare. One of the major concerns relates to increased cost of doing business for small scale and medium entrepreneurs. Various analysts feel that this might lead to massive job cuts as businesses try to scale down employees to avoid paying high insurance coverage. The policy’s success is hedged on a large number of young and healthy Americans enrolling in the program. Thus, this policy may be subject to failure if the number of young and healthy Americans enrolling falls compared to the number of sick and elderly policy holders. Lastly under the new policy, individuals with higher salaries may pay higher insurance premiums. This will be a contentious issue among the individuals who will be required to pay more.
References
Kirk, S. (2014). The Provider’s Guide to Leveraging Obamacare. New York, NY: HealthNet Publishing.
