2010 HEALTHCARE REFORM BILL

A detailed assessment of the 2010 HealthCare Reform Bill



A detailed assessment of the 2010 HealthCare Reform Bill

Introduction

The scope of the essential health benefits will directly or indirectly affect the availability and cost of healthcare for many Americans. All plans that wish to participate in the individual and small group exchanges that the states will establish must offer the minimum essential health benefits. In addition, any employer with fifty or more full-time employees that does not offer its employees a health plan with the minimum essential health benefits will be subject to a tax penalty if one or more of its employees receive federal assistance with their healthcare costs. Individuals not enrolled in a health plan offering the essential health benefits also will be subject to a tax penalty. Although the Affordable Care Act does not bar the purchase of supplemental insurance to cover care beyond the minimum essential health benefits, many simply would lack the financial means to pay the premiums for. This discussion will attempt to present a detailed assessment of the 2010 HealthCare Reform Bill that was passed by Congress and signed by the President last spring.

Discussion

However, highlighting the anemic nature of public support for the new healthcare legislation, the June 11-13 USA Today/Gallup poll also showed that 50% of Americans were in favor of Congress' repealing all or much of the law. Public reviews of the healthcare reform bill continue to be highly partisan. Roughly three- quarters of Democrats and liberals call its passage a good thing, compared with seventeen percent of Republicans and twenty two percent of conservatives. Independents lean against the bill by an eight- point margin, fifty one percent to forty three percent, largely unchanged from April (Rethmeier, 2010). On the basis of age, the largest well of opposition is found among seniors, sixty percent of whom call passage of the bill a bad thing, similar to the fifty seven percent in April. By contrast, attitudes are more favorable than unfavorable among young and middle-aged adults.

Seniors — who were among the most widely opposed to the legislation prior to passage, given their broad satisfaction with the status quo under Medicare — have not relented in opposing the bill. And while one might expect the highly charged views of partisans to remain fixed, as they have, it is noteworthy that support among independents has not grown (Nixon & Aruguete, 2010). When the U.S. healthcare system is at its best, the transition along the care continuum is coordinated among all providers to the benefit of patients. Personal health information travels with patients across the different settings, with each step in the process incorporating the previous work.

The U.S. healthcare delivery system does not provide consistent, high quality medical care to all people. Healthcare harms patients too frequently and routinely fails to deliver its potential benefits. Indeed, between the healthcare that we now have and the healthcare that we could have lay not just a gap, but a ...