Pros And Cons Of Obamacare

Westerman 1

Stephanie Westerman
Mr. Hendricks
Class Name
14 November 2013
ObamaCare: Reforming Our Healthcare System In the 2008 election, Presidential candidate Barack Obama focused on healthcare reform. Barack Obama stated that the high costs of health insurance were, “a threat to our economy” (“History of the Passage”). He made it publicly known that health insurance should be every American 's right (“History of the Passage”). Obama began his journey to establish a working healthcare plan, and succeeded. Now that this plan is on the verge of going into effect, we have heard all the media reports and recently witnessed an epic government shutdown. There are many benefits to this national bill, but the disadvantages are evident as well. Some citizens oppose ObamaCare all together, but since there are
I understand the disadvantage of higher cost for insurance, because now insurance companies are required to cover the sick, but is that not the intended purpose for insurance? The insurance companies will no longer be able to deny coverage to Americans. How is this bad? Those who were unable to find affordable coverage, or who were denied coverage due to preexisting conditions, can now get the coverage they should have been allotted

Westerman 2

from the beginning. The ObamaCare plan allows for the consumer to not be dropped from coverage when they get sick or make mistakes on an insurance application. The consumer cannot be denied coverage or treatment for being ill, cannot be charged more for being ill, or cannot be charged more for being a female (
"ObamaCare: Pros and
Cons”)
. This sounds extremely fair to me, since I am a consumer who is a woman with preexisting conditions, and I should have the opportunity to have affordable, quality healthcare. In today’s world, the cost of healthcare is outrageous. We all know it does not cost the hospital ten dollars for a Tylenol. However, due to malpractice suits,
health costs, and other contributing factors, this is what it costs the consumer without healthcare (Pfeffer).
Harvey Fineberg, MD, PhD, and president of the
IOM
, said during a webcast press briefing, "How is it possible that we spend more money on healthcare than any other country...and at the same time we do not attain the same results in healthcare outcomes and performance that others achieve?" (Fiore). I must also mention how pharmaceutical companies are charging more in the United States for medication than they do in other countries (Hall). This should be fixed by setting laws that force these companies to charge the United States an equal cost for the medication that they are giving to other countries at a lower average cost. It all comes down to greed and the lack of a unified system. However, one downfall of the ObamaCare plan is the fact that ObamaCare focuses more on making sure people are covered than it does on addressing the cost of care in the first place, which is a major issue. Fortunately, though, ObamaCare should

Westerman 3

help to curb the growth in healthcare spending (
"ObamaCare: Pros and Cons”)