Aleksander Khan
Prof. Horgan
CAL 103-M
7 March 2017
ObamaCare (The Affordable Care Act)
	“Let me be exactly clear about what health care reform means to you,” Obama famously promised at a rally in 2009, “First of all, if you’ve got health insurance, you like your doctors, you like your plan, you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan. Nobody is talking about taking that away from you.” In 2014, fifty to seventy-five percent of the fourteen million people who bought individual health insurance received cancellation notices because their plans did not meet the Affordable Care Act’s requirements.
Obamacare, or the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), is a United States federal statute signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010. The controversial healthcare law requires that almost all Americans have health insurance or pay a fine starting in 2014.
In 2013, people were able to sign up for Obamacare online at HealthCare.gov, however the website had a troubled launch. Originally, the website was intended to allow for people to browse prices of healthcare without registration, but this was changed shortly before the launch and now you must register to view pricing, because people would be dissuaded after seeing the real cost. After three and a half years of development and $1.7 billion dollars of taxpayer money, the site released in a near non functional state where the majority of users could not sign up for healthcare. This was eventually fixed and now millions have signed up for healthcare successfully.
As a direct result of Obamacare, millions of Americans lost their current providers and the majority of people are paying more for health insurance. The average individual insurance premium increased by twenty five percent, and family premiums had increased by over three thousand dollars per family at the end of Obama’s first term. Many lower class and impoverished citizens are opting to pay the $695 (or 2.5% of your income) fee for not having insurance instead of getting healthcare to save money.
From reading all of the above facts, one would likely conclude that Obamacare is a total disaster, however, this is simply not true. Obamacare has in fact provided a lot of people with free healthcare. More importantly, the amount of citizens uninsured in America dropped by 5% since 2013. ObamaCare’s greatest positive impact that garnered bipartisan support are its reforms that make it illegal for companies to deny people who have pre-existing conditions coverage or make annual or lifetime caps on coverage. In addition, the rise of the average healthcare cost was likely for the better, as it made plans that did not covered next to nothing illegal, thus forcing Americans to get real healthcare plans.
	Obamacare has fixed many real problems with the United States’ healthcare system, but it is still very flawed. The concept of making the wealthier pay much more for insurance and the poor pay less is inherently socialist and, understandably so, many Republicans are unhappy with this. Obviously, if you’re someone paying more for healthcare after Obamacare, you would likely want it repealed immediately to save thousands of dollars. If you’re someone who is now insured and able to get healthcare solely because of Obamacare you would likely want it to stay. Personally, I think it should be repealed because I do not think the government should not force people to buy healthcare and threaten them with a large fee for non-compliance. In addition, it forces people to comply to the corrupt companies in charge of medicine and its pricing. However, most people can agree that ObamaCare’s reforms brought a mostly positive impact to society, and that it is important to prevent providers from denying those with pre-existing conditions insurance. Even President Donald Trump, who is one of Obamacare's greatest and most outspoken critics, agrees that we need to keep providers from denying people with pre-existing conditions, and that it is one of the only good things about Obamacare.



Works Cited
"Budgetary and Economic Effects of Repealing the Affordable Care Act." Congressional Budget Office. N.p., 29 Nov. 2015. Web. 06 Mar. 2017.
Apothecary, The. "Double Down: Obamacare Will Increase Avg. Individual-Market Insurance Premiums By 99% For Men, 62% For Women." Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 09 Oct. 2013. Web. 06 Mar. 2017.
Pear, Robert. "Brawling Over Health Care Moves to Rules on Exchanges." The New York Times. The New York Times, 07 July 2012. Web. 06 Mar. 2017.
Somashekhar, Sandhya, and Amy Goldstein. "Full testing of HealthCare.gov began too late, contractors say." The Washington Post. WP Company, 24 Oct. 2013. Web. 06 Mar. 2017.