The struggle for health care in America is a peculiar thing. The United States is one of the few educated, industrial nations that does not offer its citizens equal access to health care. Though Obama’s Affordable Care Act will extend coverage to nearly all Americans by 2016, some Americans still find the bill controversial on ideological grounds.
“It should be pretty clear by now that I didn’t do this because it was good politics – I did it because I believed it was good for the country,” Obama said after the Supreme Court upheld the individual mandate, the most notorious clause of the ACA, by a slim 5 – 4 in June.
By 2014, the law will require Americans to maintain “minimum essential coverage.” What’s interesting about the clause is that it was, at first, a conservative proposal, and six years ago, Romney passed an individual mandate in Massachusetts with strong bipartisan support.
Nevertheless, the ACA faced strong opposition in Congress from the right for seemingly political reasons. The New York Times stated, “Republicans assail [the individual mandate] as an attack on freedom, but the provision in President Obama’s health care law requiring all Americans to buy health insurance has its roots in conservative thinking.”
It’s unfortunate, the quality of discourse in this country, that issues as fragile as health care are subject to whims of political alignments. Rumors about the ACA sprouted like weeds and appeared to based in rhetoric and speculation, but rarely facts.
The Congressional Budget Office, a federal, bipartisan agency that provides data to Congress, has consistently estimated that the ACA, when fully implemented, will save money for the government, insurers and patients. In the long run, it will decrease our deficit, give insurers a means to cover pre-existing conditions and lower premiums.
Under Obama’s plan, 94 percent of Americans will stay on their current insurance plan. Insurers can no longer deny patients coverage because of pre-existing conditions, nor can they place obscure caps on coverage when catastrophic medical expenses arise. Most importantly, the bill will cover over 30 million new Americans while simultaneously balancing costs.
Our paradigm is fundamentally different from the rest of the world’s – to us, health care has become a sort of political game. We’ve settled on a plan that is best for Americans, but skeptics are set on repealing a bill centered in compromise.
Obama’s ACA is an experimental and innovative bill that moves the country past ideology. By rewriting the rules of the insurance market, Obama has given us an ethical system that substantially reorganizes health care, making it more accessible and affordable for those who need it most.
