Opinion of Obamacare

[Progressive]

We read through the bill in its entirety in a focus group (over the course of many, many meetings). What I like about the bill is that the health care exchanges should allow costs to decrease because it allows individuals to truly see the entire spectrum of health care costs. I also like the fact that health insurance providers must provide coverage to those until age 26 on parental plans and that pre-existing conditions are no longer. Certain clauses in the bill prevent the health insurance companies from raising your premiums/annual costs to cover these measures.

I also like the individual mandate. Just like paying your school property taxes, you may never use the services of public education, but should you need it or have a use for it, it is there. This is actually a conservative piece of legislation because it prevents people from jumping onto government health care if they can afford their own health policy. The health care mandate will actually begin to save money for the government. The bill also contains a Patient's Bill of Rights which I like. The bill also gives a $250 prescription drug rebate to taxpayers from their tax dollars. The insurance companies by this fall, will also be prohibited from dropping policyholders (unless they fail to pay things such as co-pays, etc.). This is a practice that happens for several reasons, especially when a policyholders partakes in an extremely expensive procedure such as cancer treatment or surgery.

Limits: Previously, health insurance companies put lifetime limits or dollar expense limits on insurance policyholders. This bill eliminates limits. The reason being: too many sickly people have "used up" their limit expenses and have suffered/died/been unable to purchase treatments because their insurance company essentially dropped them.

$15 billion has been invested to help combat smoking/obesity. The Prevention and Public Health Fund will provide incentives for inner-city and impoverished youth to eat healthier foods: will include grants for health foods and other foods stores to open up in poorer areas. In our study group, we spent several hours researching obesity costs, and found on several different occasions that obesity is a strain on public funds and obesity reductions seriously lower government expenditures.

Rural health insurance providers will also be assisted by government resources in certain ways. For example, let's say in central Kansas, KansasHealth (I made it up) struggles to provide enough locations for medical care. Well now the federal gov't along with the state of Kansas can help provide funding to open up several other health centers (if need be) so long as these health centers follow the laws provided by the Patient Protection and Affordability Act.


What I don't like: The bill will put a requirement on small business to provide health insurance, though despite many complaints and misinformation, the federal gov't provides generous tax decreases to these businesses, rebates, and new exemptions from business income tax.


There are truthfully so many more things in this bill that we discussed such as Medicare Donut Hole Reform, and an expansive new agency that is going to seriously eliminate medicare fraud. In our research in the study group, we also found that preventive care can seriously reduce debts for not only the federal and state governments but also for the policy holder and insurance provider. If anyone wants me to continue on what else the legislation does, let me know!