Please respond to both post separately. 1. While it should be noted that the rol
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Please respond to both post separately.
1. While it should be noted that the roll out of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) has helped families to attain healthcare insurance, it does not seem to have helped everyone attain access to healthcare services. According to one research report in the tax year for 2014 there were still 19.7 million families that were uninsured for at least one month of that fiscal year (Lurie & McCubbin, 2016). To measure this impact, it is important to understand that when the law was first enacted in 2010 there were roughly 50 million Americans who did not have health insurance at the time (Kominski et al., 2016). According to the latest information provided by the United States (US) Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) the number of Americans who have signed up for and paid premium for the PPACA is currently 35 million people, with 21 million having received further access to Medicaid services after expansion to low-income adults under the age of 65 (ASPA, 2022).
It should be noted that according to the Congressional Budget Office the net federal subsidies for the program in 2022 are expected to total $997 billion dollars and could reach up to $1.6 trillion by the end of the next decade. While those are substantial numbers it should be noted that they only make-up 4% and 4.4% of the annual gross domestic product (GDP) of the US (CBO, 2022). What was especially heinous about this program, initially, was that a penalty was imposed on uninsured Americans at around $200 and that number increased to roughly $695 in 2016 (Goodnough, 2016), leaving many uninsured individuals to have to decide if the penalty amount was lower than actually paying for healthcare coverage. This seemed sinister as most low payment plans did not offer much in terms of services provided and many chose to pay the penalty instead to try and save as much money as possible at the time. When the amount was increased it almost seemed to force Americans to buy cheap insurance to avoid the penalty as it was no longer cost efficient to sustain the shared responsibility fine as opposed to going with a cheap option that didn’t provide many benefits. It can be said that uninsured US citizens were forced to become insured at this time in the country and ultimately led to higher rates of poverty among the lower socioeconomic classes. It’s tough to see how this was ultimately beneficial to the public.
2.Insurance is a key factor in healthcare and how an individual utilizes that care which ranges from preventative check-ups, maintenance check-ups/medications, and treating acute and long-term conditions. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has three primary goals: 1, Make affordable health insurance available to more people. The law provides consumers with subsidies (“premium tax credits”) that lower costs for households with incomes between 100% and 400% of the federal poverty level (FPL). 2, Expand the Medicaid program to cover all adults with income below 138% of the FPL. Not all states have expanded their Medicaid programs. 3, Support innovative medical care delivery methods designed to lower the costs of health care generally. (Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs (ASPA), 2022)
Identify, how many Americans remain uninsured despite the PPACA (Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act), using the most current scholarly resource available.
The amount of Americans that remain uninsured, according to Katherine Keisler-Starkey and Lisa N. Bunch, 2022 More people were insured in 2021 than in 2020. In 2021, 8.3 percent of people, or 27.2 million, did not have health insurance at any point during the year, representing a decrease in the uninsured rate and number of uninsured from 2020 (8.6 percent or 28.3 million).
Identify how many Americans are currently signed up for and have paid premium for the PPACA.
According to the Affordable Care Act Coverage on CMS.gov, from the last enrollment period of November 1, 2021 through January 15, 2022 there was a total of 14.5 million people signed up for PPACA.
Discuss the current cost to Americans in subsidies, which are financially supporting the PPACA. What is the current fine charged by the IRS to those without insurance and how much will it increase in 2016? Will this fine increase have a negative or positive impact? Explain why.
The funding for the subsidies for those financially supporting PPACA comes from workers that pay a tax equal to 0.9% of their wages over 200,000 if single or 250,000 if married filing jointly. There are also other various taxes that add to the total amount of revenue which is estimated to be 346 billion (How is Obamacare paid for? n.d.).
There is currently no fee/fine for not having health coverage by the IRS; however, some states have their own laws where they do, in fact, charge a fine for not having health coverage.
In my opinion, I feel the fine caused more stress over people who didn’t have access to coverage due to small businesses or owning their own company, which left them having to choose to pay the fine or pay for coverage, whichever one was lower. In most cases, in personal accounts of what I saw, people were paying the fee/fine vs. insurance as it was more cost-effective.
