An Introduction

ObamaCare, the latest health care reform statute in America, is a moniker for ‘Patients Protection and Affordable Care Act’ or simply ‘The Affordable Care Act’ and has been trending long for its pros and corns. It rallied through years of debates, discussions, and even a Supreme Court case before seeing the daylight. This byzantine piece of legislation has garnered ambivalent responses from the American citizens. In the aspiration to increase the number of insured people in America, is this law infringing upon people’s fundamental prerogative to make their own choices?

An Overview

It would seem like a practical impossibility to include all facets of this 10,000pags plus long US Federal Statute in an overview. However some of the essentials of the Act, stripped of its legal jargons, are as follows.

• A minimum standard of essential health benefits is set out to be included in all major medical health insurances, making it more worthy but more expensive. Government aided Medicare plans are likewise catapulted to these standards with a provision for “free” insurance to people under certain income group depending on the size of their household. Further, tax credits and subsidies are applicable to appropriate margins of people and are advanced from the general fund.
• The only options made available to people are to either opt for a health insurance or pay a tax penalty, an amount which would surge with each consecutive year from the year of fine. People with pre existing medical conditions cannot be denied an insurance, covering theoretically everyone within these caps.
• Employers with large firms ( the ones which holds an equivalent of minimum 50 employees) are required to contribute to their full time employees’ health insurance else pay a tax penalty etc.

The glitch and politics marring the ObamaCare from becoming an effective remedy

An enquiry into the intricacies of the statutes show that it hasn’t effectively been able to    cut through the pre existing deficiencies of the Health Care in the US. Millions still lack access to Health care and many of the plans are envisaged on such high cost sharing by the patients, that one would be compelled to forgo the necessary medical aid . While it laid out promises of allowing anyone and everyone to keep their insurance and doctors, it turned out to be an empty fallacious one. What it can boast of doing is establishing around 250 new federal agencies and raise taxes from just about everyone. Tax from the corporations, employees, non insurance holders, and even from defaulters of the purchase period of insurance. While it promises financial support for middle class people to buy the insurance, it extracts huge amounts from the other side of the population. It is hence saddling down the American citizens with onerous and burdensome proposals.

A less spoken about fact of the Act is that it was crafted behind the curtains way back in 2008, when the Democrats controlled the entire legislative process. An extremely unpopular tangent to the enactment of the law remains that not a single Republican voted for the bill and it is rumoured that the Democrats themselves hardly read through the bill. The enactment was a result of coercion by their leader, Ms.Pelosi, than an understanding of the bill. This is a catastrophic plan for most people under 30 who would be in perfect health and in no need of such a plan, yet need to pay for it ! It essentially puts its foot down on what you buy, when you buy, and the very way in which you buy health Insurance, turning health care into a bureaucratic mess. That is where it becomes such a colossal fundamental problem because being forced to buy and do something you do not want and need is surely not Freedom. It surely is nothing close to that coveted American Dream.