Hr 3590 Patient Protection Act and Affordable Care Act 2010

H.R. 3590 Patient Protection Act and Affordable Care Act 2010 H.R. 3590 is intended to expand access to health insurance, reform the health insurance market to provide additional consumer protections, and improve the health care delivery system to reduce costs and produce better outcomes. The bill would expand insurance coverage to 94% yet leaving 24 million Americans without insurance coverage, at the same time suppose to improve the functioning of the individual and small group insurance markets. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the legislation will reduce the number of uninsured by 32 million in 2019 at the net cost of $938 billion over ten years, while reducing the deficit by $124 billion during this time period. All individuals will be required to have health insurance by 2014. Penalties will occur for not have insurance by then by assessing a $695 per person and maximum of $2,085 per family, or 2.5% of household income. This penalty will be phased-in from 2014-2016. The penalty does have exceptions such as, financial hardship, religious objectives, American Indians, people who have been uninsured for less than three months, those whom the lowest cost health plan exceeds 8% of income, and those whom have income under the tax filing threshold. This is the main objective (individual mandate) of this bill but there are other provisions in the bill that will be covered at the same time such as: * Expansion of Public Programs * American Health Benefit Exchanges * Changes to Private Insurance * Employer Requirements This is the figures brought to paper in 2010; there are many different views on the accuracy and legitimacy of this bill regarding the figures such as costs and purpose of the bill. The bill also creates a higher tax to the public for the reason of paying for health care across the country. The government has to get the money from somewhere to fund this and it would be through taxes throughout the ten years.