Health care

Health care

Health Care Reform is it right?
Currently about 45 million Americans are uninsured and with health care premiums this number is on the rise (Pickert). It is estimated that by 2018 health care spending will equal 20% of the US gross domestic product (Pickert). These alarming issues have made health care reform the primary goal of the president. On March 23, 2010, Barack Obama signed into law the Affordable Care Act, also referred to as Obamacare, which plans to bring coverage to 32 million uninsured people by taxing those in higher income brackets (Clemmitt). This is not the first time universal health care has been implemented in the United States although it is the largest such attempt. In 2006 Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney signed the Massachusetts Health Care Reform Act into law. The law has proven wholly successful as Kenneth Rapoza of Forbes explains, "Every resident is required by law to have insurance, or pay a fine. To date, 99% of the state's residents have health insurance, up from around 90% before healthcare reform. That number changes drastically depending on which segment of society you look at. At least 24% of low income residents did not have health insurance prior to the 2006 law, according to the Urban Institute, a Washington DC non-partisan think tank. Today, just 8% of low income adults do not have healthcare coverage."
The Affordable Care Act was modeled after this system and hopes to achieve similar results but on the national level (Rapoza). Although the bill was not passed without scrutiny, not one Republican member of congress voted for the bill to pass (Clemmitt). Conservatives often cite the cost of the health care plan and the constitutionality of the law. As Scott Gottlieb states, "Uncle Sam will spend $2.6 trillion on ObamaCare over the next 10 years" (Gottlieb). This steep cost has conservatives asking where the money will come from and for an entirely new approach to health care reform. The republican dominant House of...

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