Now that Obamacare is on the chopping block, should we have supported it more?

Presidents always have a lot of promises they make before they are in office. Like to lower taxes, offer more jobs or peaceful relations, with other countries. When President Barack Obama was running for president these eight years ago, one of his stances was his idea of better healthcare. President Obama got to do what not many politicians get to do, and actually had his idea signed into law in 2010. That brainchild was of course the infamous Obamacare, also known as the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Obamacare faced a split audience when it was brought to the table. Many people were either really for, or it very against it. In this most recent presidential debate, almost all of the candidates had their problems with Obamacare. President Donald Trump has strongly voiced his opinion that Obamacare needs to be done with, and then quickly replaced with a plan of his own. Given that the United State’s House and Senate have the republican party (the party that contests Obamacare the most) as the majority along side President Trump, it is almost a guarantee that Obamacare will soon be done away with. Before it is gone entirely, it is important to understand the parts of the plan that many people likes, and others hated.

Pros:

Now, those with preexisting conditions (for example, if you had cancer, and then you were looking for an insurance plan) can not be denied coverage. Before this, many insurance companies didn’t do this, but only covered illness or accidents that happened while you were on their plan.

Obamacare made healthcare more obtainable. Over the first five years the ACA was active, 16 million citizens got insurance. Sure, not everyone of those people only got insurance because of the ACA, but it may have made it easier.

Insurance companies can’t have a set amount of money they will spend on their customer. Before, insurance companies could limit the money spent on their clients’ diseases, therefore leading to some problems. This made it extremely hard for people who had ongoing or chronic diseases.

All in all, the ACA was also supposed to make healthcare less costly. The ACA also covered a large amount of screenings, and set in place many rules to prevent pharmaceutical companies from skyrocketing the prices of their meds.

Cons:

With more coverage from the government, the money has to come from somewhere. With ACA, taxes went up.  This created new ones for pharmaceutical sales, and medical devices were made in order to pay for it.

Many said that businesses decided to try to cheat the system and lessened the hours their employees works in order to make their employees eligible for health care coverage. If the business had over 50 full time workers (the employees work over 30 hours a week), the business would have to offer insurance to their workers.

Because of the new factors of the ACA, for those who already had health care, their premiums (the amount one pays for insurance) might have gone up.

Not much is known of the plan that will possibly be replacing the ACA. From President Trump’s website, he sites high premiums, less choice and less competition as some of the reasons he dislikes the ACA. Although we don’t know the exact layout of our next health care plan, we didn’t have a layout from President Obama’s plan either. In order to fully grasp the benefits of the new plan, keeping an open mind is key.