A bill is a document used for most legislation, whether permanent or temporary, general or special, public or private. A bill is put together by the Representative to be voted on or debated and must be accepted by the majority (218 of 435). Then it will be pass to the Senate for a vote with the majority(51 of 100). Then difference will be share or resolve among the House and Senate. Finally, the bill will be revised and will be given to the president to sign within 10 days (House, 2021).

In 2010,  the United States ‘s healthcare system was refined, and the Affordable Care Act  was pass into law by the Obama Administration. ACA is the biggest healthcare changes in the nation that includes the Medicare and Medicaid. The aim of the ACA is to grant all America access to a health insurance with a reasonable premium. Also, to extend Medicaid and allow coverage for low-income people under poverty level (Healthcare.gov, 2021). The Affordable Care Act law indicated that private insurance program cannot denies coverage to any Americans due to pre-existing illness or diseases (Milstead & Short, 2019). This conduct shows an imbalance of sick people to healthy people while increasing the risk pool.  The compliance and mandate from the federal government has made many insurances company to be removed or voluntary pull out from the Health insurance market.

According to Kaiser (2021), “ In 2017, President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress unsuccessfully pursued several efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.” The majority part of Trump’s campaign was focused on his promises and his support of repealing the ACA. In 2017, President Trump took over the office and Republican party were controlling the house and senate; while the insurance markets became new and it was an opportunity time to repeal the ACA. The Legislators are not worried on how the reform of Medicare and Medicaid will affect the citizen; they are more concerned on how any changes will affect their reelection chances.

References

HealthCare. (2021). Affordable Care Act (ACA). Retrieved from

https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/affordable-care-act/.

House. (2021). How Are Laws Made? Retrieved from

https://www.house.gov/the-house-explained/the-legislative-process

KAISER FAMILY FOUNDATION. (2021). Compare Proposals to Replace The

Affordable Care Act. Retrieved from

Compare Proposals to Replace The Affordable Care Act

Milstead, J. A., & Short, N. M. (2019). Health policy and politics: a nurse’s guide.

Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Hi there Idowu! Great post!

My attention turns to your statement ” The aim of the ACA is to grant all America access to a health insurance with a reasonable premium.” It sounds a bit like, or that The United States is potentially headed towards universal health care?

According to Zief, et al. (2020), “universal healthcare may lead to a healthier populace, and thus, in the long-term, help to mitigate the economic costs of an unhealthy nation”. Zief, et al. (2020) further states that the approval of the ACA was partly due to the intent of moving The United States of America towards a step into universal health care.

While the implementation of universal healthcare would be complicated and challenging, we argue that shifting from a market-based system to a universal healthcare system is necessary. Universal healthcare will better facilitate and encourage sustainable, preventive health practices and be more advantageous for the long-term public health and economy of the United States. (Zief, et al., 2020)

Zief, G., Kerr, Z., Moore, J., Stoner, L. (2020, November). Universal healthcare in the united states of

america: A healthy debate. Medicine (Kaunas), 56 (11): 580. Retrieved September 18, 2021, from, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7692272/

Hi, Idowu great post. The politics of cost-benefit analysis can have bad choices, especially in this issue of health coverage. By replacing the ACA due to its expensive allocation of funds by the government, many will become uninsured, leading to increased deaths due to lack of access to health. With the politics of cost-benefit analysis, legislators make policies based on the cost instead of policy benefits. However, all these can be stopped by the analysis of voter viewers. Voter views hinder the legislators from acting according to their conscience but presenting the opinions of the people.

Dassonneville, R., Blais, A., Sevi, S., & Daoust, J. F. (2021). How citizens want their legislators to vote. Legislative Studies Quarterly, 46(2), 297-321.

23^rd March 2010 was the hilarious date that then-President Barack Obama signed into law the Affordable Care Act (ACA). ACA and the Patient protection act put into law various health insurance reforms such as Medicare and Medicaid. Medicare covered the elderly and disabled Americans, while Medicaid covered low-income adults, children, and pregnant women. However, in 10years, the Republican legislators have tremendously made concerted efforts to repeal/replace the ACA.

Legislators make decisions after comparing the estimated cost and opportunities associated with a certain policy and how it makes sense from a business perspective. The government expenditure on the ACA stood at $43billion for just helping the middle-income citizens to get covered in 2016. The federal cost incurred to expand Medicaid programs to residents living below 138% poverty level stood at $74billion in 2016 in just 31 states and Washington DC (Glied et al., 2018). By a cost analysis calculation, the combined government expenditure on the Affordable Care Act supersedes the net revenue provided by the program. The Republican legislators have vowed to repeal ACA and replace the program with a substitute.

Under the full influence of the cost-benefit analysis politics, legislators examined, estimated, and compared these costs and their economic impacts and decided to replace ACA. The politics of cost-benefit analysis has tragic consequences in that legislators have to choose who will live and who will die (Wildavsky et al., 2018). For example, by repealing the ACA, health coverage and access will be reduced since only those on good payroll will afford healthcare. The poor will have to die while the rich survive. On the other hand, legislators do benefit a lot in terms of policy development and implementation. Despite the cost-benefit analysis, as long as the policy favors them, it will be implemented no matter the cost.  The reality of the issue is that ACA has helped many, if not all, to cheaply access healthcare, despite the availability of other problems such as longer waiting hours. From a business perspective and cost-benefit analysis, the legislators aimed at returning the health coverage to the previous versions, where private institutions offered health coverage with unregulated prices. Most legislators own these private institutions. To be re-elected, they would like to monopolize the economy, control the costs and convince the public that they deliver more than anticipated.

However, voters’ views have always affected these legislator’s decisions when positioning the national policies. Maneuvering through the repealing of the ACA has been a standstill debate, with conflict being witnessed between the legislator’s views and the views of the people.

References

Dassonneville, R., Blais, A., Sevi, S., & Daoust, J. F. (2021). How citizens want their legislators to vote. Legislative Studies Quarterly, 46(2), 297-321.

Glied, S., & Jackson, A. (2017). The future of the Affordable Care Act and insurance coverage. American journal of public health, 107(4), 538-540.

Wildavsky, A., & Horowitz, I. L. (2018). The political economy of efficiency: cost-benefit analysis, systems analysis, and program budgeting (pp. 183-209). Routledge.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) also known as Obamacare was signed into law  in March 2010 with the goal of reducing the number on uninsured Americans by making coverage more affordable and increasing access to care. To make this a possibility, the law expanded eligibility to medicaid while creating new marketplaces where people without employer coverage could buy policies directly from insurers  (The RAND Corporation, n.d.)

With the adoption of the ACA, approximately 24 million people gained access to subsidized or free care through marketplace tax credits and Medicaid expansion. The law did however face strong opposition right from the start despite some of it success (The RAND Corporation, n.d.). Both sides of the political spectrum have called for the law to be repealed and replaced with alternative reforms. Although studies show that the number of uninsured Americans has decreased quite significantly since the law was enacted,  the law remains as politically divisive as ever. Since 2010, the ACA has seen more than 50 repeal attempts by a Republican-led House and a previous Supreme Court challenge in 2012 (Reisman, 2015).

If the ACA were fully and immediately repealed, with no replacement, the number of insured Americans would drop by 19.7 million to 231.9 million in 2017 as estimated by analysis conducted in 2016. Out-of-pocket costs for an enrollee in the individual market would average $7400 annually, an increase of $4200 over the status quo. Repeal would increase the federal deficit by $33.1 billion annually compared with the status quo, largely because it would eliminate the ACA’s revenue-raising provisions (The RAND Corporation n.d.).

Americans’ favorable opinion of health care reform has been rising steadily and as such, legislators are aware that in terms of cost benefit analysis, they risk not getting re-elected because of the far-reaching negative aspects of repeal and replace. For example, repealing and replacing the ACA would deny many Americans access to affordable care. For this reason, legislators must be aware of and consider the needs of their constituents and pander to those needs in order to win elections and this can affect their positioning on national policies. The need to appeal to their constitutents can sometimes compell politicians to adopt a middle ground platform by moderating their policy choices. (National Council for Social Studies, n.d.)

References

Lee, D. S., Moretti, E. M., & Butler, M. J. (n.d.). DO VOTERS AFFECT OR ELECT POLICIES? EVIDENCE FROM THE U. S. HOUSE. Www.Public.Econ.Duke.Ed. http://public.econ.duke.edu/~psarcidi/lunchf08/leemorebutler.pdf

National Council for Social Studies. (n.d.). How Legislators Make Decisions. Https://Www.Socialstudies.Org/.https://www.socialstudies.org/advocacy/how-legislators-make-decisionsReisman, M. R. (2015, September).

The Affordable Care Act, Five Years Later: Policies, Progress, and Politics. Www.Ncbi.Nlm.Nih.Gov. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4571845/

The RAND Corporation. (n.d.). The Future of U.S. Health Care. Https://Www.Rand.Org/. https://www.rand.org/health-care/key-topics/health-policy/in-depth.html

Hi, Roseline; great post. According to Dassonneville et al., (2021), legislators are elected to represent the view of the people not to follow or act according to their conscience. With regards, if the legislators’ constituency supports the policy, they have no option but to present the view of the people and vice versa. For instance, if the people of America in all the States support ACA expansion instead of repealing/replacing it, congress will have no option but to drop the motion even if they are personally in support of the replacement.

Dassonneville, R., Blais, A., Sevi, S., & Daoust, J. F. (2021). How citizens want their legislators to vote. Legislative Studies Quarterly, 46(2), 297-321.

Thank you for your insight Ahou,

I absolutely agree, Legislators are interested in winning elections and being reelected and will work harder in key legislative areas that are visible to constituents in order to gain votes and remain in office. This can however have a negative effect because it can drive a culture of compromise that drives them to water down inorder to win (Indivisible.org, 2020).

In relation to cost benefit analysis and the ACA, we see that public sentiment about the ACA, also known as Obamacare,  shifted considerably during the Trump administration after Republicans tried but failed to repeal it. Now, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing economic crisis, which has led to the loss of jobs and health insurance for millions of people, health care again looks poised to be a lasting key issue in guiding voters decision. Legislators must therefore weigh the benefit of supporting a legislation that is popular with constituents versus the cost to them if they were to go against what is popular with their constituents.

References

Indivisible. (2020, December 9). Indivisible States: How State Legislatures Work. https://indivisible.org/resource/indivisible-states-how-state-legislatures-work

Milstead, J. A., & Short, N. M. (2019). Overview: The economics and finance of health care. In Health Policy and Politics: A Nurse’s Guide (6th ed., pp. 171–192). Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.

  Great post-Roseline; I agree with you. Americans’ favorable opinion of health care reform has been rising steadily. As such, legislators are aware that they risk not getting re-elected in terms of cost-benefit analysis. This is why the far-reaching negative aspects of repeal and replace the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 has proven to be one of the most hotly debated and politically contentious national policy initiatives in decades (Mayer, M et al.,2018). Also, the ACA repeal has significantly been affected because legislators’ decision depends on their reelection since their main goal is to win the election and be re-elected. So, they do what it takes to get the votes to win the election, thereby influencing efforts to repeal and replace. One theory is that Trump and his team were never serious about repealing Obamacare in the first place. It was just politics, something he said he would do during his election campaign. The team just said what they knew the people wanted to hear. It was noted, for instance, that the efforts to repeal lasted a mere 63 days. (Collier, R. 2017).

Reference

Collier, R. (2017). Why Trumpcare failed. CMAJ: Canadian Medical Association Journal, 189(17), E645–E646. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1503/cmaj.1095414

Mayer, M et al., (2018.State Implementation of the Affordable Care Act.https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12245

Willison, C. E., & Singer, P. M. (2017). Repealing the Affordable Care Act Essential Health Benefits: Threats and Obstacles. American journal of public health, 107(8), 1225–1226. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2017.303888

Obama BH. Repealing the ACA without a Replacement – The Risks to American Health Care. N Engl J Med. 2017 Jan 26;376(4):297-299. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp1616577. Epub 2017 Jan 6. PMID: 28058966.

Affordable Care Act (ACA) Definition. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/affordable-care-act.asp

That is an interesting point and very potentially accurate. The show that goes on in DC is very confusing. Very difficult to tell what is truth and what is not. Great post!

Hi Roseline,

Thank you for sharing details about the Affordable Care Act (ACA). You are correct that the aim of the healthcare reform is to lower the number of uninsured people in the United States, and to grant all citizen an access to a healthcare coverage. The federal government widen eligibility to Medicaid and establish an online portal so that Americans  without health coverage can purchase premium from the Insurance market  (The RAND Corporation, n.d.).

The fact remains that the rate of uninsured people in the U.S has reduced since Affordable Care Act became law. The Republican party has tried multiple times to repeal the ACA, but they were not fully prevailed (Reisman, 2015). Millions of American will lose their insurance coverage if President Trump administration were fully repealed.

References

Reisman, L. (2015). National Council for Social Studies. How

Legislators Make Decisions. Retrieved from

https://www.socialstudies.org/advocacy/how-legislators-make-decisions

The RAND Corporation. (n.d.). The Future of U.S. Health Care.

Https://Www.Rand.Org/. https://www.rand.org/health-care/key-topics/health-policy/in-depth.html

Legislators reelection cost-benefit analysis unfortunately have become the primary factor in determining support of bills despite the best interest of the citizens. Legislators are designated to serve as representatives for the best interest of constituents. Party affiliation and reelection points rather than serving the public have shifted focus of representatives. Legislators prioritizing personal interest over the people positions citizens at a disadvantage. Although the Affordable Care Act moved the United States forward towards the direction of universal health insurance by way of providing coverage for over 20 million of the 50 million uninsured Americans, political parties remained divided over the issue (Laureate Education, 2018).

Party affiliation and reelection strategies unfortunately determine a legislator’s actions as it pertains to taking a position on a proposes bill. Proven effective the Affordable Care Act remains (ACA) remains an arguing point amongst political parties. Legislators of the house concerned with reelection every two years worked to remain aligned with their affiliated political party (Congress.gov, n.d.). Polls used to determine voter temperament provide legislators data to predict potential outcomes. Focused has shifted from best interest of the people to generating staying power when determining bill affiliation. Understanding congress cost-benefit-analysis far exceeds dollars and cents is an important component to understanding politics (Walden University, n.d.).

References

Congress.gov. (n.d.). Retrieved September 15, 2021, from https://www.congress.gov/

Laureate Education (Producer). (2018). Contemporary Issues in Public Health Policy with Joel Teitelbaum [Video file]. Baltimore, MD: Author.

Walden University. (n.d.). Discussion: Politics and the patient protection and affordable care act. Nurse 6050 Policy and Advocacy for Improving Population Health.

https://class.content.laureate.net/e8517d23c2d0ac3f4b543fdb9c5ef220.html#section_container_20

I agree that the legislator is more concerned about their reelection; supports bills that can gather the most votes. Legislators consider the will of their constituents, the needs of their states, and the desire of their party and realign their priorities for them to stay in office (How Legislators Make Decisions). Representatives usually sponsor bills that are important to them and their constituents; and will try to gain support for them in hopes that they will become laws; (Lucas, 2019). It may affect a specific person or organization that might have a particular interest. In return, help out with endorsement, fundraising, and campaign bases for reelecting representatives. Professional advocates make big bucks to lobby members of Congress and government officials on the issues their clients care about (Influence & Lobbying, 2019).

Reference

How Legislators Make Decisions | Social Studies. (n.d.). www.socialstudies.org. https://www.socialstudies.org/advocacy/how-legislators-make-decisions

How a Bill Becomes Law. (2019, August 27). Congressman Frank Lucas. https://lucas.house.gov/about/votes-and-legislation/how-bill-becomes-law

Influence & Lobbying | OpenSecrets. (2019). Opensecrets.org. https://www.opensecrets.org/influence/

Hi John,

It’s really disappointing when someone enters the field to do the work to make things better for the people but somehow become caught up in the politics and loose sight of the vision.

Great discussion and I totally agree. Even if they get elected with the best intentions, the system seems to eventually corrupt everyone. Lobbyists flaunt millions of dollars and gifts to buy votes. Eventually everyone will crack under the pressure. They will not get elected without millions of dollars in funding. If they cannot be bought, they will be replaced by someone who can be bought.

It is sad to see what pressure of money, politics and media can do to people. The greater good of why someone may have originally have done something can quickly go south when these outside factors take a toll. We see this very commonly with these legislators when it is time to take vote. Many of them lose sight and we as voters also lose trust.

Hello Shanaa, 

 As you stated, cost-benefit analysis is far from only a monetary focused view, politicians will  weigh the cost and benefits of any opportunity possible in order for it to favor them. Specific to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), policy makers aren’t focused on how real people will be affected by their changes, but more so on how these changes will affect their chances to being re-elected (Milstead & Short, 2019). It is an understatement to say that the ACA wasn’t a groundbreaking plan that ended up benefiting millions of Americans and assisting them in getting the healthcare coverage they deserve. This is where the Trump Administration didn’t play their cards well. This Administration came in so ready to repeal and replace the ACA for business reasons, the cost-benefit analysis, that they weren’t concerned about the public opinion or views. These efforts of repealing the ACA would have left 23 million newly covered Americans under the ACA, uninsured (Stolberg, 2020). Not only was the plan to repeal seen with much dissatisfaction by millions of Americans, but there was no “replacement” plan in sight to help reassure the people that would be affected. This in turn continued to affect the Trump Administration’s popularity which would cause a much lesser chance for re-election.  Also, to feed off of what you had stated about legislators working to remain aligned with their affiliated political party, this was also a downfall for the Trump Administration. When elected in 2016, the Trump Administration had a republican dominant House of Representatives when the democrats lost 25 seats in the 2016 midterm elections (Cohn, 2020). This is was assisting President Trump in making these claims and ideas while proposing plans that inevitably wouldn’t work to replace the ACA. However, political parties didn’t align in the 2018 midterm elections when the democrats regained dozens of seats in the House (Cohn, 2020). These democrats fed off of the public view of anger towards the idea of getting rid of the ACA that helped so many. The campaigns focused on such ideas of supporting the ACA and how to improve it while the Republicans were dodging the topic completely or taking back statements made regarding their plans of repealing. 

 When it comes down to the nitty gritty, there is a lot of politics that happen behind closed doors and a lot of decisions can be made unfairly and unjust. However, this country still remains a Democracy and this means that at the end of the day, the public view and opinion is what matters. It is what is going to make changes happen. It is what is going to have officials elected or re-elected. If the public can come together and make the decisions as a whole and vote for what they believe in, then the public is what will run this country. 

References

Cohn, J. (2020, March 6). The ACA, repeal, and the politics of Backlash: Health AFFAIRS BLOG. Health Affairs. 

https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20200305.771008/full/.

Milstead, J. A., & Short, N. M. (2020). Health Policy and Politics: A Nurse’s Guide (6^th Ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning. 

Stobierski, T. (2019, September 5). Harvard Business School Online: How to do a Cost-Benefit Analysis & Why It’s Important. 

https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/cost-benefit-analysis

Cost-Benefit Analysis and Political Re-elections 

Cost-Benefit analysis is defined as the process of comparing the estimated costs and opportunities associated with a project or decision to determine whether it makes sense from a business perspective (Stobierski, 2019). The key word I take from this definition is “business.” This exactly what this means to legislators and politicians. This couldn’t be more true with regards to the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Policymakers aren’t focused necessarily on how real people will be affected by changes to the ACA or Medicare and Medicaid, but rather on how the changes will affect their own re-election chances (Milstead & Short, 2019, pp. 40). The repeal/replace plan that the Trump Administration quickly proposed upon entering office in 2016 was not thoroughly planned with a cost-benefit analysis. The plan to repeal the ACA was only backed in the House of Representatives due to the Democrats losing 25 seats in the 2016 House midterm elections (Cohn, 2020). However, the Trump Administration, although making large claims that they would accomplish insuring “everyone” at even more affordable rates than they were currently paying, quickly realized this would be nearly impossible with how much healthcare truly costs. This means that the Trump Administration was failing the replace portion of this plan and thus the cost of proposing such an aggressive plan surely wouldn’t benefit them in terms of being re-elected. Come 2018, at the next House midterm election, the Democrats regained dozens of seats riding off the public anger of the Trump Administration attempting to take away the insurance coverage the ACA provided (Cohn, 2020). 

 Analysis of public opinion is such an important part towards votes, that in this 2018 midterm House election, Republicans attempted to obscure records, dodge the subject of the ACA in interviews, and even attempted to say that their repeal plan wouldn’t have rid the popular features of the ACA (Cohn, 2020). The public was aggravated with the Trump Administration, not because he planned to repeal the ACA, but the fact that he was unable to provide a replacement plan of any  sort. As I had mentioned, the democrats rode the wave of this public opinion and focused their campaigns and speeches on the ACA and how they were going in with full support for keeping and improving the law. This was clear in the House election considering they regained the many seats they had lost two years prior. It also was clear during the 2020 presidential election with the Democratic Party, in full support of the ACA, beating out the Trump Administration. This just goes to show that the Trump Administration didn’t properly use this cost-benefit analysis to the fullest degree and in the long run assisted in losing them the next election term. Although a lot of politics are done behind closed doors, without the popular public opinion, the chances of re-election dwindle. Therefore these politicians need to reconsider what many be cost effective and do what is more effective to the real life people that these decisions affect. 

References

Cohn, J. (2020, March 6). The ACA, repeal, and the politics of Backlash: Health AFFAIRS BLOG. Health Affairs. 

https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20200305.771008/full/.

Milstead, J. A., & Short, N. M. (2020). Health Policy and Politics: A Nurse’s Guide (6^th Ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning. 

Stobierski, T. (2019, September 5). Harvard Business School Online: How to do a Cost-Benefit Analysis & Why It’s Important. 

https://online.hbs.edu/blog/post/cost-benefit-analysis

“The Administrative Procedure Act, adopted in 1946, governs the process that federal agencies must use when developing and issuing new rules. The law helps ensure that agencies use a fair process for decision-making and rely on a sound administrative record” (Keith, 2021). When proposing changes to the ACA, the government issues their proposed changes and releases that information to the public for their input. It also allows the courts to follow their standards to approve the proposed changes.

One issue with the Biden plan for changes with the ACA is making it more affordable so more people have access to medical care coverage. “According to eHealth’s recent study of ACA plans, in 2020 the national average health insurance premium for an ACA plan is $456 for an individual and $1,152 for a family. This average cost does not include people who receive government subsides” (eHealth Insurance, 2020). Currently, through my employer, I pay around $200 from every biweekly pay check for a family insurance plan. I can’t imagine if I wasn’t able to get coverage through my employer and had to pay essentially another house payment for coverage which isn’t even as good as what my employer offers with a higher deductible. If the goal is to make it more affordable for all, there needs to be a lot of work done to find the best coverage and best affordable route for everyone.

Keith, K. (2021, May 17). The affordable Care act in the Biden Era: Identifying Federal priorities for administrative actionke. Affordable Care Act in Biden Era: Identifying Federal Priorities | Commonwealth Fund. Retrieved September 16, 2021, from https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2021/may/affordable-care-act-biden-era-federal-priorities.

Porretta, A. (2020, November 24). How much does individual health insurance cost? – ehealthinsurance.com. Retrieved September 16, 2021, from https://www.ehealthinsurance.com/resources/individual-and-family/how-much-does-individual-health-insurance-cost.

Thank you for the feedback Angela. I completely agree about a more quality and affordable route being the top priority. I currently don’t pay for a family plan but I can see how much from your response that it can truly cost. And for some people, having that much come out of a paycheck every two weeks just isn’t easy. Out of pocket insurance is astronomical and absolutely is a main driver for the high uninsured rate of Americans.

The goal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) was to achieve nearly universal health insurance coverage in the United States through a combination of policies largely implemented in 2014 (Courtemanche, Marton, Ukert, Yelowitz, & Zapata, 2018). This Act was put in place so everyone can afford health insurance coverage however, everyone couldn’t afford it. Low-income families are still without health insurance and did not meet Medicare and Medicaid qualifications.

There have been many repeals on this law. In 2020, U.S. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand addressed the threat of repealing health care for millions of Americans and the future of the Affordable Care Act (Amid Rushed Confirmation Hearings, 2020). Without health insurance during this COVID pandemic can be costly. Having health insurance currently is important and one less thing the American people must worry about. Even with health insurance many individuals are seeing an enormous amount of healthcare bills.

On March 11, 2021, President Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA; Library of Congress, 2021), a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package that builds on the ACA and the existing safety net (Fry-Bowers, 2021). The act increased healthcare coverage by increasing tax credits for families to enroll in private health insurance. Also, the act provided individual states to extend Medicaid/ CHIP programs to eligible people. Which ultimately provided health insurance coverage for more than 80.5 million people.

References

Amid Rushed Confirmation Hearings, Gillibrand Addresses the Threat of Repealing Health Care for Millions of Americans and the Future of the Affordable Care Act. (2020, October 13). States News Service.

Courtemanche, C., Marton, J., Ukert, B., Yelowitz, A., & Zapata, D. (2018). Early Effects of the Affordable Care Act on Health Care Access, Risky Health Behaviors, and Self‐Assessed Health. Southern Economic Journal, 84(3), 660–691. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1002/soej.12245

Fry-Bowers, E. K. (2021). The Affordable Care Act, COVID-19, and Health Care Insurance for Children. Journal of Pediatric Health Care. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1016/j.pedhc.2021.07.010