Do You Care About the Affordable Care Act?: Is it Ethical?
There has been and currently (January 25 2011) is much controversy over President Obama's administration Affordable Care Act (so called "Obamacare") which was passed by Congress and signed by the President into law last year. At present there is much talk about getting rid of this Act and indeed the House of Representatives passed legislation recently to do so. There is much controversy about the politics of the act but I fear not much discussion about the ethics related to it. Isn't the purpose of the law is to provide the best healthcare available to all the people in the United States (beneficence) and to be fair (justice) in the distribution and management of the
rules governing the practice of the law to all the stakeholders? It is.. but some still wonder "is it?"
What I would like my visitors to write on this thread is their understanding of the Affordable Care Act in terms of whether they feel it is in everyones best interest or whether important parts are missing or parts of the law are unfair. What is your understanding? What are your suggestions? Do you care about the Affordable Care Act? ..Maurice.
posted by Maurice Bernstein, M.D. @ 11:43:00 AM
2 comments
2 Comments:
I think the only way to make insurance companies cover pre-existing conditions is to have the requirement that everyone have insurance, so that the young and healthy have to purchase insurance.
I think the only way to get the young and healthy to purchase insurance is to have a meaningful penalty for not doing so.
The same goes for requiring businesses to provide insurance.
As this healthcare plan has such ridiculously low penalties, it is far cheaper for people to just pay the penalty and actually purchase insurance if/when they need it. Sure, that doesn't take into account being run over by a truck, but many young people say that's what they'll do.
I see this as a potential disaster, skyrocketing premiums - as the insurance companies have to take on the sick, and the healthy don't join, the only thing they can do is raise premiums.
The penalty for not having insurance needs to be equal to the cost of the cheapest plan. Then, I'd imagine everyone would get the insurance - they'd be out the money either way, may as well get something for it instead of donating it to the government.
oops, sorry, forgot my intials above - feel free to add them to the prior post if you like - TAM
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