Policy StatementPolicy StatementAffordable healthcare formally known as universal healthcare system has been a largely debated topic since the Clinton administration. During the Clinton administration, means of implementing a healthcare system that will provide healthcare to all citizens of the United States was explored with no collective agreement of implementing. In this paper the focus will primarily be based on identifying at least three independent policy problems which are: the loss of jobs and the down shifting of the economy, crowding out of insurance exchanges, and Medicare provider cuts and the jeopardizing of senior citizens using Medicare savings to finance new entitlements that will be challenged and debated regarding the implementation of the Obama healthcare legislation. Also, problems from two opposing perspectives will be framed.
Working with the structure of the Clinton’s administration healthcare plan, President Obama attempted to create a solution to get the universal healthcare plan implemented. The plan that was drafted from the Obama administration as a solution to providing citizens with universal healthcare was a program called Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act, most notably referenced as Obamacare. March 2010, President Obama signed his new healthcare reform in to law, which was an instrumental part of his presidential campaign. Prior to the signing of Obamacare, the most significant repair to the United States healthcare was the passing of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. The most notable agenda of Obamacare is directed at helping the many uninsured citizens gain affordable health coverage despite their income or prior and/or current health related issues. While constructing a healthcare reform to provide affordable health to all citizens was no easy task, there were a number of obstacles that had to be overcome; multiple extension and revisions to coincide with the laws that compromise the federal legal framework for the United States healthcare system. President Obama’s healthcare now provides the basic legal protection healthcare that has been absent from the country’s healthcare system; particularly affordable health coverage from an individual’s birth to their retirement
The first independent policy problem that will be addressed is the destruction of jobs as well as the potential down shift of the economy. The implementation of Obamacare is set to bring forth higher taxes on small business. Two percent of small businesses in America have over 50 full-time employees that put them in the predicament of having to choose to insure full-time workers or endure a fine (Obamacare Facts, n.d.). To avoid the fine or having to insure employees full time, many of the small business will submit to cutting the hours of employee to make them more of part time or quarter time employees, even stop hiring. Furthermore, the top two percent, closer to three percent of businesses
to the middle income, will continue to face more taxes and a jobless rate of 12% (The Washington Times, March 15, 1995). The economic crisis that occurred in 1994, a decade after the United States entered the Great Depression, will ultimately lead to an increase in the government funding of health care in every American, increasing the deficit by more than $50 billion over the next decade (The Huffington Post, Nov. 29, 2008, at 7). An even higher figure will be needed to provide for current healthcare needs, as health spending is projected to rise to $903 billion over this decade, and $700 billion of that will be required to keep government available. The $2 trillion in budget deficit that the White House will be paying to keep government open will put that money toward health care. The budget cuts to Medicaid and the Social Security Act that went into effect on April 1, 2010, were the only major cuts to Social Security since the Great Depression.
A similar problem has been the health insurance crisis in the United States, which has the largest share of workers in the United States population who are uninsured. Although both of these areas have experienced economic growth, they have been plagued by low growth in the health insurance market that allows large-scale companies to expand aggressively, and the growth rate also slows as people lose jobs and pay less to buy insurance. Some of those people are taking in fewer and fewer of their kids over the last nine months, but those workers already make up about half the uninsured. The ACA, which increased the insurance premium subsidies that apply to small businesses in 2012 and 2013, reduces these subsidies by 90% when the government determines that the subsidies will help with the cost of the health care they provide.
In response to these problems, the Federal government began a series of changes to the health insurance market in 2012, most notably requiring that small and medium-size businesses participate in an “insurance exchange”; (Health.gov, 7/12/2013) The ACA, along with the Federal budget that opened in 2013, will replace the ACA which will also require that insurance companies offer coverage for their employees. This process will be implemented by state, local and tribal government that will implement state-based co-pays across the state to compensate for the need to cut payments on federal workers and contractors. The process will extend across all state and local government and will involve small and medium-sized employers setting up co-pays that can be combined with one to pay for federal payments. The ACA also will require that all employers comply with health care providers’ mandates on what coverage they will provide to their employees.
There is currently no law that allows the federal government or any State, political subdivision, department, agency or the like to allow employees to choose insurance directly