Business Finance - Management Week 10 Assignment - Interest Group Presentation

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Business Finance: Management Week 3 Assignment

Historical Perspective: The Affordable Care Act; Barack Obama vs Donald Trump

Administrations

Gabrielle McNeely

Professor Timothy Smith

Strayer University

PAD 510

1/21/2024

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Historical Perspective: The Affordable Care Act; Barack Obama vs Donald Trump

Administrations

The Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as the Patient Protection and Affordable

Care Act (PPACA), is a health insurance reform policy signed into law by President Obama on

March 23rd, 2010 (Vankar, 1). Passed by the 111th Congress, ACA was America's most

expansive regulatory overhaul of health insurance coverage since the adoption of Medicare and

Medicaid. Particularly, the new law ushered in reforms by expanding access to health coverage

by making it more affordable and protecting consumers from exploitative health insurance

companies (Vankar, 1). Previously, health insurance firms would deny coverage to people with

chronic conditions such as heart disease, asthma, etc., or limit the compensation they would offer

those patients. Notably, before the introduction of the Affordable Care Act, more than 50 million

Americans lacked health insurance, one of the lowest performances among developed nations in

health coverage (Vankar, 1). The policy aimed to increase universal health coverage and improve

health insurance quality, affordability, and fairness. Despite this policy's anticipated benefits, the

ACA became one of America's most contested public health policies. This analysis focuses on

the Affordable Care Act during President Obama's and Donald Trump's eras. While President

Obama championed the passage and full adoption of the ACA, President Trump sought to repeal

the bill and reverse most of the gains made in health insurance coverage.

Historical Perspective of the ACA: Social, Economic, and Political Environments during

President Obama's Era

The Affordable Care Act came at the right time, socially, economically, and politically,

since the transformation of the country's health coverage system was long overdue. Socially,

Americans had been subjected to discrimination in accessing health coverage, where people with

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chronic health conditions would not access coverage or would have the amounts of

compensation capped at a particular figure (Gusmano, 3). Such a discriminative policy led to the

creation of social classes, where the rich would afford expensive health coverage while those

with no income locked out of such programs (Campbell and Shore-Sheppard, 4). Therefore, such

a move had divided society between the rich and the poor, where the rich would afford health

insurance.

Economically, during the passage of the ACA, the US economy was barely recovering

from the 2008 global financial crisis. Although the financial crisis ended in June 2009, the US

economy had barely recovered from the recession by March 2010, when the ACA was passed.

Notably, the US economy averaged an annual growth of 2 percent in the first four years after the

recession. In addition, 5.05 million Americans lost jobs in 2009, during President Obama's first

year in office (Jones, 5). The loss of jobs affected health insurance coverage since those affected

could no longer pay insurance premiums and hence lost their coverage. Similarly, in 2010, the

country experienced one of the highest unemployment rates at 9.6 percent (Jones, 5). Based on

the country's tough economic situation, the passage of the ACA in 2010 offered a major relief to

citizens by reducing the overall cost of health insurance. Therefore, such a policy came at the

right time.

Politically, the ACA policy, also known as Obamacare, was highly anticipated since

Obama promised to insure the uninsured during the campaign period. However, the nation was

divided politically on the matter of ACA. In 2010, only 46 percent of the US adult population

supported Aca. While Democrats favored the bill, Republicans opposed it.

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Historical Perspective of the ACA: Social, Economic, and Political Environments during

President Trump's Era

Since the bill's passage in 2010, Republicans have strived to repeal it and reverse most of

the gains achieved. Republican's primary argument is that the bill would distort America's

healthcare system by making private insurance more expensive and also undermine Medicare for

seniors. Trump's victory in the 2016 elections renewed Republican's efforts to repeal the ACA

law. According to Gusmano et al. (3), President Trump's health policy agenda revolved around

repealing ACA, which he termed a 'disaster.' Socially, the ACA, as of 2016, had narrowed down

the social gap in terms of access to healthcare. By 2016, the number of uninsured Americans had

dropped to 26.7 million from 46.5 million in 2010 (Tolbert and Drake, 6). As a result, ACA

reduced the social gap between the poor and the rich regarding the ability to afford health

coverage.

Economically, President Trump's reign, before the COVID-19 pandemic, enjoyed better

economic prospects than Obama's tenure in 2010, when the economy was recovering from the

2008 financial crisis. As a result, the people were better placed to afford healthcare coverage. As

highlighted, less than 27 million Americans did not have health insurance cover in 2016,

compared to over 46 million in 2010 (Tolbert and Drake, 6). However, despite the positive

progress in regard to health insurance as a result of the ACA, Trump's administration sought to

abolish it.

The prevailing political situation regarding ACA during Trump's reign was not different

from Obama's. The public's support for ACA barely changed during the two reigns, with 45

percent of US adults supporting the policy, compared to 46 percent in 2010. Politically, President

Trump sought to energize his political base by repealing the ACA. For instance, in 2017, he

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passed the Tax Cuts and the Jobs Act (TCJA), which eliminated ACA's shared responsibility

(Neuman et al., 7). In conclusion, the Obama and Trump administrations had diverse views

regarding the ACA. While Obama's administration pioneered and passed the ACA in 2010, his

successor, President Trump, spent much of his time in 2016 trying to reverse the ACA law. The

political support and opposition to ACA have not changed over the years, with the majority of

Democrats supporting the ACA law while Republicans strive to abolish it.

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Source List

1. Vankar, Preeti. 2023. Affordable Care Act: Statistics and facts. Statista.

https://www.statista.com/topics/3272/obamacare/#topicOverview

2. US Department of Health and Human Services. 2022. About the Affordable Care Act.

https://www.hhs.gov/healthcare/about-the-aca/index.html

3. Gusmano, Michael, K. et al. 2020. Trump v. the ACA. Health Economics and Law, pp.1-

5.

4. Campbell Louise Andrea and Shore-Sheppard Lara. The social, political, and economic

effects of the Affordable Care Act: Introduction to the issue. The Russell Sage

Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 6(2), 1-40.

https://www.rsfjournal.org/content/6/2/1#sec-7

5. Jones, Chuck. 2020. Trump's job losses will exceed the Great Recession. Forbes.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2020/04/04/trumps-job-losses-will-exceed-the-

great-recessions/?sh=43b3dd9f7d37

6. Tolbert Jennifer and Drake Patrick. 2023. Key facts about the uninsured population. KFF.

https://www.kff.org/uninsured/issue-brief/key-facts-about-the-uninsured-population/

7. Neuman Tricia. et al. 2020. President Trump's record on healthcare. KFF.

https://www.kff.org/health-reform/issue-brief/president-trumps-record-on-health-care/