Throughout his tenure as President of the United States,Barack Obama has promised to bring change to America. His promise of change has finally come to fruition with the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obamacare). The new bill was passed, March 23, 2010. This new piece of legislation, and those who passed it, promised to change the American healthcare system, and they have not fallen short on that promise.
ACA is perhaps one of the most controversial, lengthy and confusing pieces of legislature that has been passed in the history of the United States. The former Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi herself said, “We need to pass it to know what?s in it.” Indeed, the proposed bill itself numbered approximately 2400-2700 pages long, making it nearly impossible to comprehend the new law fully.
Regardless of the controversy and length of the ACA, it has made some long overdue reforms to America?s old healthcare system. Obamacare has promised to extend healthcare to the 40 million Americans who could not originally access it, such as: the poor, people with pre-existing conditions and the young people.
The reforms and revisions Obamacare made have been necessary and long overdue in America. No one should be denied healthcare for having a “pre-existing condition.” However, the way in which these reforms have been implemented is less then satisfactory.
The new standards for healthcare that are now being enforced by the ACA have resulted in the termination of about 5 million plans for Americans in the individual-markets. These plans have been canceled because they did not meet Obamacare?s standard for health, even though the people who had these plans liked them. President Obama?s promise of “If you like your plan you can keep it” was not true, and has resulted in severe media scrutiny.
These people who have been forced off of their plan will be in a period of transition. They will have to get new, higher cost plans, covering things they don?t need to be covered, or want covered.
For instance, older couples will have to pay for maternity coverage whether they want it or not. Younger people have to pay for mental health coverage. whether they want to or not. The reason why these people have to pay for things they don?t want or need is to help pay for those who do need the coverage.
The best way to explain it is that everyone chips in and buys coverage they don?t need to help pay for those who want that coverage. Except people aren?t really ?chipping in?, they?re being forced to pay for it.
On top of people losing their plans, most people have been unable to access the government website to sign up for Obamacare. On the first day six people signed up for new healthcare plans, that number has slowly increased each day. Ironically, ACA resulted in people losing their healthcare coverage instead of people gaining affordable coverage.
The exact amount of people who have signed up for Obamacare is not exactly known. The Obama administration has released some questionable records on how many people have joined. It is said by the Health and Human Services (HHS) that 106,000 have signed up for the Obamacare exchanges. It is very slow progress, because the goal was to have 40 million people signed up by the end of the year.
Aside from the technical failure of the website, there have been a variety of security risks. A group of white hat hackers were hired to hack into the website and test its security. They found the site easy to crack into, and being able to view users phone numbers, emails, usernames, passwords, even their locations. Anyone on the Obamacare website does have their security at risk.
It is unknown how long it will take to fix the website. David Kennedy, one of the hackers, said,” It’s really hard to go back and fix the security around it because security wasn’t built into it,”. Kennedy mentions that it will take multiple months to over a year to at least address some of the critical-to-high exposures on the website itself.
Though the ACA promised great things for healthcare reform, its implementation and execution of the tasks at hand have been too unsatisfactory. The law and website will need considerable revisions and adjustments to meet the bare minimum.
Whether the site and law should be shutdown completely and everyone should start from scratch is up to debate among our lawmakers. Hopefully, whatever course of action they take is for the best.
Make sure to do your own research on the ACA. This law can affect you in a variety of ways, it would be unwise to not see how it affects you.
If you want to check out my primary source for information on the ACA, look up The Kelly File watch the show, Wednesdays at 9 p.m.
This writer can be reached via Twitter: @RRoggenstein. Follow The Feather via Twitter: @thefeather.
For more opinions, read the Nov. 26 article, President encourages thankfulness, community involvement.
