Written by Lauren Bucher
President Obama signed a sweeping health care reform bill, the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act, into law on Tuesday, March 23.
“We have just now enshrined, as soon as I sign this bill, the core principle that everybody should have some basic security when it comes to their health care,” Obama said before he signed the bill according to an article from The New York Times.
Over the next decade, the bill will expand health coverage, incorporating about 32 million people who are currently uninsured. According to the latest U.S. Census Bureau report, as of 2008, more than 46 million Americans have no health insurance.
This bill requires that most Americans have some form of health insurance. The major stipulations that are in the bill prevent insurance companies from denying coverage to people who are sick or have pre-existing conditions.
Another monumental health care change: young people will be allowed to stay on their parents’ health insurance policies until they are 26.
“We won’t be able to see the full effects of the bill for the next few years, but it’s a step in the right direction,” junior political science major Jane Messina said.
The bill works, in part, by subsidizing private coverage for both middle-income and low-income people and expanding Medicaid. Additionally, exchanges will be added, starting in 2014, which are state-run insurance marketplaces that sell insurance to eligible Americans.
“I am a little nervous that they are expanding Medicaid, which already is bad enough that a lot of doctors don’t even accept it,” nursing student Brianna Sims said.
The House passed the bill with a vote of 21 to 212 on March 21. By no means, however, is the partisan struggle about the government’s role in health care over. The Republican Party is proposing a number of fix-it bills for the reform, and attorneys general from 13 states have sued the federal government already.
“I think we should be more focused on other issues right now, like creating more jobs,” Caleb Hancock said. “I am also worried that we will not have enough doctors.”
The bill will cost the government about $938 billion over the next decade according to the Congressional Budget Office. This non-partisan estimate predicts that the bill would reduce the federal deficit by $138 billion during the next decade, according to anarticle in the New York Times.
Six months after enactment, the bill blocks insurance companies from denying coverage to children who have preexisting conditions, and from canceling people who get sick that are under their insurance already, and from imposing lifetime caps on coverage. Moreover, the uninsured who have been refused for coverage because of pre-existing conditions are put into a pool, where the government will help pay for their medical expenses until 2014.
By 2014, insurance companies will no longer be able to shut out people who have pre-existing conditions from coverage. Among other requirements in 2014, most employers will be required to provide coverage for their employees or be penalized. Companies with fewer than 50 employees will be excused from providing employee health coverage, and by that time, most people must have obtained coverage.
“I think it’s a good idea,” Messina said. “It’s going to cost a lot of money, but it’s a good idea.”
The bill works in part by expanding Medicaid by 16 million patients, while cutting Medicare by $500 million over the next 10 years, which will help fund the new plan. Currently, most people do receive their insurance from their employers, but right now it is not a requirement for companies to provide their employees with health coverage. Changes in healthcare mandate that companies provide health coverage to their employees. People who choose to buy individual insurance plans will be able to continue to do so, and this will not change much, except for the effects of more regulation of the health insurance industry.
“As a nursing student, I believe that health care is a right,” junior Rachael Kunkel said. “However, I am weary of all the greed and politics tied up in this issue. Regardless, change in the system is necessary.”
For more information, see www.healthreform.gov.
