The Affordable Care Act, also known as “Obamacare,” was enacted in 2010. Since then, there have been a series of successes and failures. While there are many different ways to look at the law, every person, whether conservative or liberal, can agree the Republican party’s claim to repeal Obamacare will cause multiple problems.
While we do not yet know what the next law will be to address the state of health care in our country, I think we have to be careful in repealing this law in particular.
There are multiple facets to the ACA. Several key features include having children stay on their parents’ health care until they are 26, preventing companies from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions, prohibiting companies from rescinding coverage because of technical errors, and the individual mandate that requires that Americans who opt out of health insurance must pay a penalty.
The most contentious of these is the individual mandate. I understand not wanting the individual mandate in theory. When people tell me I need to do things, I usually want to do the opposite.
I also understand the issue of the personal freedom and that if you don’t want to buy health insurance you shouldn’t have to. But I don’t agree with it.
If you show up to a emergency room without health insurance, you get treated regardless. However, if you don’t have insurance, then the hospital still has to make money at the end of the day. This means the hospital has to raise prices on everything in order to help pay for the person who cannot pay their bill. That’s just a fact of life.
Ignoring that, though, let’s focus on Donald Trump’s words.
President-elect Trump says he would keep the pre-existing conditions section of the bill. He has said this since the campaign trail, and it gained little to no traction.
This is a consistent belief of his, and it should be seen as an important look into his further decision-making for health care reform. The problem with this is how to convince insurance companies to back a law that requires them to insure sick people without providing them a large number of healthy consumers.
As much as people hate it, health care and insurance are businesses, and they have to hedge their bets.
It’s going to be an uphill struggle for lawmakers to find a way that offers protection for pre-existing conditions while restricting a source of income for these companies.
I don’t know much about what the Republicans will propose in the newest health care bill. As someone who wants to enter the healthcare profession, I am interested to see what they propose. However, I am also concerned for the 22 million people who are struggling to find out whether or not they will be covered or not.
npatwari@indiana.edu
