Affordable Care Act
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Affordable Care Act
The affordable care act is a policy introduced in America by President Obama to
revolutionize the healthcare department into providing affordable service to all Americans. ACA,
according to Obama, would ensure that healthcare services were reasonable for the middle to low
class in the country. However, ACA has seen America record an increase in government
expenditure in the health sector, with 17.7% of its GDP spent on these expenses (Himmelstein et
al., 2019). This figure raises questions about the ACA because of the effectiveness of other
countries like the UK despite spending less money. The affordable care act has improved the
health services for the financially unstable people in the country, but it has stretched the
government’s expenditure significantly. If the government should spend as much money as it is
spending, then the life expectancy should be higher than 78 years. Therefore, ACA is slightly
ineffective, and new policies could be introduced to increase life expectancy and reduce
government expenditure.
In order to improve access to affordable health insurance for moderate- to middle-income
households, “the government should explore and consider expanding the Advanced Premium
Tax Credit program or adding fixed-dollar, age-adjusted tax credits to the mix” (Zhao et al.,
2020). As a result, coverage for households that receive assistance or medical care under the
Affordable Care Act might be significantly expanded. One of the most noticeable drawbacks of
the ACA is that the government is spending more money, yet America is behind UK and Japan
in terms of life expectancy. Including these classes will inject more resources into the program,
which means the government will spend less on the health sector. If the expenditures were to
remain the same, then the quality of service would improve significantly, meaning that America's
life expectancy is expected to increase to 85 years and above. Therefore, the government body
that is in charge of health reforms should implement this policy initiative.
References
Himmelstein, D. U., Lawless, R. M., Thorne, D., Foohey, P., & Woolhandler, S. (2019). Medical
bankruptcy: still common despite the Affordable Care Act.
Zhao, J., Mao, Z., Fedewa, S. A., Nogueira, L., Yabroff, K. R., Jemal, A., & Han, X. (2020). The
Affordable Care Act and access to care across the cancer control continuum: a review at
ten years. CA: a cancer journal for clinicians, 70(3), 165-181.
