Social welfare policies

A set of legislation and administrative guidelines known as “social welfare policies” are intended to improve the welfare of community members. These regulations were created largely to offer ways to address issues of equity and fairness for all citizens. The American social welfare system is credited with having been founded by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This is because Roosevelt was president when some of America’s most significant social welfare laws, such the Social Security Act of 1935, were passed. Another significant piece of social welfare legislation in the US is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The core principle of this Act is that every American must have some basic security when it comes to healthcare (Lewis, 2014).).The Healthcare Freedom Act, on the other hand, seeks to repeal parts of the Affordable Care Act. Therefore, it is imperative to discuss how the Affordable Healthcare Act came about and what it covers. Also, the paper will discuss the Skinny Repeal bill.

Affordable Healthcare Act

Part I

Since the 1970s, different members of the Congress had introduced bills to change the US healthcare system, but these bills were never passed into law. In March 2013, President Barrack Obama signed into law the Affordable Care Act (ACA), commonly referred to as Obamacare. The growing cost of healthcare in the US is the major problem that necessitated the passage of the Affordable Healthcare Act (Lewis, 2014). The Act focuses on reforming the healthcare system by improving comprehensiveness of health insurance coverage for every American in order to contain the rising costs of healthcare in the U.S.

The United States is among the nations with the highest healthcare cost, which jeopardizes the economic well-being of millions of Americans. Despite the high healthcare costs, the quality of care as compared to other countries is still mediocre (Lewis, 2014). It is estimated that the healthcare cost in the United States is equal to almost 18 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (Lewis, 2014). Moreover, in 2011, American citizens spent $8,680 per person on healthcare. This is equivalent to 17 percent of the nation’s GDP (Carper, n.d). The high cost of healthcare was as a result of the lack of insurance coverage among US citizens. Further Carper (n.d), affirms that before the Affordable Care Act, lots of American citizens did not have health insurance coverage at all.

Part II

The primary goal of ACA is to reduce the growth of the United States health care spending and to give more Americans access to affordable and quality health insurance coverage. The other goals of the Act include supporting innovative medical care delivery methods that are designed to lower healthcare costs in the US. Moreover, ACA aims to expand Medicaid to cover adults with low-income levels (Carper, n.d). To achieve these goals, the Act expands not only the affordability but also the availability of both public and private health insurance through various reforms such as consumer protections, taxes, subsidies and more (Carper, n.d).

The Affordable Healthcare Act covers millions of Americans whom initially did not have health insurance. For instance, the policy allows for young adults to be covered by their parent’s insurance until they are 26 years of age. Also, the policy prohibits insurance firms from denying any American health insurance because of their medical history. Furthermore, for many preventive services, the Act eliminates out-of-pocket payments (Lewis, 2014). As a result, millions of Americans who could not afford health care before ACA can now do so.

Reducing health care spending in the US was the expected outcomes of ACA. Indeed, the policy has been a huge success. It has reduced the number of uninsured Americans by half and has significantly reduced healthcare cost for low-income families in America. Importantly, it is expected that the policy will continue to keep the overall health care cost down.

Healthcare Act Skinny Repeal

Initially, the Skinny Repeal bill was officially known as the Healthcare Freedom Act. The primary goal of the Skinny Repeal bill was to roll back some of the controversial provisions of the Affordable Care Act (Pear et al., 2017). The bill would have eliminated the part of ACA that requires every American to have health insurance or pay a fine. Also, the bill would have permanently repealed the requirement that employers with more than 50 employees should have health insurance for them (BBC, 2017). If this bill had passed, about 15 million Americans would have been left without insurance cover thus increasing the healthcare spending in the US.

Americans need affordable care, and ACA made healthcare more affordable. Doing away with the provisions of ACA that requires all Americans to have health insurance could have increased the healthcare cost for low-income families in America. Additionally, if the bill could have passed, the number of uninsured people could be about 15million. This would cause insurance premiums to increase by 20 percent (Sullivan, 2017). Therefore, the Healthcare Freedom Act was not meaningful and would not have improved care for Americans.

References

BBC. (2017). US healthcare: Senate ’skinny repeal’ bill fails. Retrieved from: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-40750071

Carper, T. (n.d). Why Do We Need the Affordable Care Act. Retrieved from https://www.carper.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/why-do-we-need-the-affordable-care-act

Lewis, M. (2014). What led up to the passage of the Affordable Care Act? Retrieved from http://www.vendingmarketwatch.com/article/11446948/what-led-up-to-the-passage-of-the-affordable-care-act

Pear. R., Kaplan. T., & Cochrane. E. (2017). Health Care Debate: Obamacare Repeal Fails as McCain Casts Decisive No Vote. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/27/us/politics/senate-health-care-vote.html

Sullivan, P. (2017). Healthcare groups blast skinny repeal, warn premiums will spike. Retrieved from: http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/344229-healthcare-groups-blast-skinny-repeal-warn-premiums-will-spike