Hotly debated during its introduction, the Affordable Care Act–better known as Obamacare–promised sweeping healthcare reform to “provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans and reduce the growth in health care spending, and for other purposes.” Obamacare’s grandiose goals and its passage and implementation in 2010 thus beg the question: is Obamacare working?
For the last five years, Obamacare has sought to increase the number of people enrolled in a health insurance plan. To achieve this, the program started by expanding Medicaid, a governmental health insurance program targeting those in poverty; next, it broadened the criteria for a number of other health insurance programs, including coverage of dependents up to age 26 and reimbursements for pre-Medicare retirees. In 2011, Obamacare embarked on the long-term component of its framework, which included providing employers with tax incentives in exchange for offering employee insurance packages. With these changes came increased compensation for primary care doctors, who are projected to encounter the bulk of the newly insured population. Subsequent years saw Obamacare mandate higher tax surcharges for those making over $200,000 to fund itself, as well as implement more stringent requirements for employer’s and group health plans. The healthcare reform culminated in universal healthcare in 2014 when citizens faced increasing fines for not being insured.
And so, Obamacare has indisputably increased the number of people with health insurance across the nation; the number of uninsured has dropped 16.5 million, to be exact. Even so, criticism of Obamacare abounds. Citing the increase in the program’s projected decade-long budget from $9.6 billion to $2.6 trillion, many Republicans argue that Obamacare has proved far too costly for it to be effective. In addition, many opponents of the ACA have pointed out that while Obamacare may be beneficial for the previously uninsured, it burdens healthcare professionals and interferes with pre-existing health insurance plans. Many have even disputed the number of new enrollees, arguing that they may well have been forced to enroll in Obamacare in lieu of a prior health insurance plan due to the ACA’s requirements for “qualified” health insurance plans.
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Raw data from November 2014 to March 2015 shows that Obamacare approval ratings stand at roughly 43%, though other sources note a decline to an all-time low of 39% as 2015 progressed. And so the debate continues. In June of 2015, the question of whether or not subsidies should be available for people who buy health insurance through federal exchanges instead of state exchanges led to the hearing of the case King v. Burwell before the Supreme Court. Though the Supreme Court upheld the right to subsidies by healthcare, thus supporting the ACA, Obamacare’s critics continue to oppose and overturn the reforms wrought by the program.
So has Obamacare been successful, after all? It has certainly delivered on the concept of its promises. As to the quality of implementation and its effectiveness for Americans as a whole, however, it may be too early to tell.
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