honors post 1

Obama's health care Act

What makes this significant to all American citizens

In America there are many American families that cannot afford health care for themselves and their family, this has been a controversy for many families because they are concerned about how they will pay for medical bills. I believe that Obama's health care reform is one of the most significant element of health care legislation in American history because it has been a heated topic, American citizens with low incomes will be able to afford health care, and America is following the footsteps of other countries.

According to whitehouse.gov/healthreform it says, “Health reform makes health care more affordable, holds insurers more accountable, expands coverage to all Americans and makes our health system sustainable.” On March 23, 2010, the Affordable Care Act became law. While this may be a relief to citizens others may argue against it, for this reason it has been a debate between different political parties such as Democrats verses Republicans. Democrats obviously are for the Act while Republicans believe that there should be more of a free market. Now that it has been signed the bill will be taken into effect but will take a while to be put into effect. This means that low income families are going to be able afford medical bills but how?

The way this plan works is that people who already originally could afford healthcare wont really benefit from this because there will be a tax increase for healthcare which is how people who cant afford it will be able to now thanks to taxes that everyone else paid for. A lot of people who can afford it are mad at the idea because they don't want to spend their tax money on other people, the way they think is, “I'm not sick so why should I pay for someone else health care with my hard earned money?” This though is understandable because there are two ways people think one if you have a lot of money then it should all be yours because you worked on hard on it. The other would believe that the reason you earned a lot of money in the first place was because other people helped you, so some of the money you earn should go back to society. An other issue that follows up is arguments whether universal health care will make America loose or save money on the long run.

According to Joel A. Harrison he believes that because America is following the foot steps of other countries such as Canada, Germany, and France that America will save money because they spend less money on health care. “the United States spent 15.3% of GDP on health care in 2004, while Canada spent 9.9%, France 10.7%, Germany 10.9%, Sweden 9.1%, and the United Kingdom 8.7%.” Despite these statistics though America already owes China a lot of money, so although it could save money on the long run it is not for sure because there could be other factors contributing to this. The new health care law will take a while before people see effects on how it saves or waste money.

There are many events in US history that just as this new bill introduced by Obama has effected the way health care is such as the civil rights act which helped desegregate hospitals but I chose this because it is recent and many controversies it has caused because it is effecting everyone for better or worse. It is an event that will follow the foot steps of other countries and could either save or waste money. Either way it is significant because it affects all the classes.

Resources:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/healthreform

Bryan Young, “A Good Case for Universal Health Care ,” HuffingtonPost.com, June 7, 2008. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bryan-young/a-good-case-for-universal_b_105866.html

Joel A. Harrison, “Paying More, Getting Less,” Dollars and Sense, May 8, 2008. http://dollarsandsense.org/archives/2008/0508harrison.html