Federalism: Obamacare and Donald Trump

About every American uses medical care at least once in their lifetime. Therefore, everyone should have a right to medical care as it is a necessary component of life. However, is the Affordable Care Act the right solution to giving universal healthcare to all Americans? Not only does it raise income taxes for the middle and upper class, it also increases the cost of medical care per visit for each of these social groups. Passed by Barack Obama and enacted on March of 2010, the Affordable Care Act disables the middle class by offering little assurance and more burden. The Affordable Care Act does not provide a better alternative to providing every American with health care and should thus be repealed.

Prior to the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, lower class Americans were unable to afford insurance to pay medical bills. Many fell below the poverty line and were not adequately covered by health insurance. Before the Affordable Care Act, many Americans were not receiving healthcare because out of pocket expenses cost too much. The worry for Americans was whether their condition qualified for medical deductions or how they would pay for their medical expenses. As a result, in 2009, the Affordable Care Act started to take its place on the Congress floor. The topic debate lasted for eight months, and passed with mostly Democrats voting for it and all Republicans against it. Finally, signed by Obama in March 23,2010, many Americans were covered by Obamacare regardless of class and affordability of health expenses. However, despite allowing healthcare benefits to all social backgrounds, the burden eventually fell on the middle and upper class to fulfill the medical expenses. Obamacare caused many Americans who were not covered to pay high taxes and short term health care costs. Finally, Obamacare cost families to lose employment health benefits. The impact of Obamacare affects all of Americans because of the need for healthcare.

Affordable Care Act has caused inconveniences for people, patients, and doctors. For a family in New Hampshire, Obamacare has increased the cost their healthcare insurance tremendously. While Obamacare helped the lower income class, it disregarded the middle class that “earn too much to get financial assistance but are still on a tight budget” (New York Times 2018). According to the New York Times, “about 25,000 New Hampshire residents paid full freight for Obamacare plans last year, according to a legislative reports and their premiums increased by an average 52 percent this year”. While they are not too rich to pay for insurance, they are also not poor enough to receive benefits. As a result, middle class families are forced to pay their fair share of insurance and on top of that the share of the lower class. Another example is a family paying medical fees for their son who totaled his car in an accident.

The patient who was lucky to survive his crash and receive spinal correction surgery now faced the cost of surgery and months of physical therapy. The family who comes from a middle class self-employed business owner is forced to pay “their monthly health care expenditures [which] will exceed their mortgage payment” (Heritage 2017). The anecdotal information from this family shows that the three healthy family members will pay more but lose access to their son’s medical providers. This case is just one of many Americans who have similar problems with Obamacare regulations. Lastly, even Doctors are taken away from compassionate patient care because of the Affordable Care Act. For Dr. Hill, instead of spending time with patients, he is required to by federal bureaucracy to focus on “non-clinical duties and paperwork, they’ve got to see more patients to keep up with expenses” (CNN 2017). For most doctors, upon entering the world of medicine was to be able to treat and help patients, however, Obamacare has in turn made them business owners of medicine. The Affordable Care Act discontinued the passionate care for patients because doctors are putting attention on maximizing their time by seeing many patients in a short amount of time. As a consequence, Obamacare offers assistance to only a small portion of the population, mainly lying lower class, and hurts the middle class people, patients, and doctors.

Some argue that Obamacare is actually beneficial to Americans by creating more jobs and insuring more Americans. For example, “1.2 million jobs would be lost if Affordable Health Care was repealed” (Economic Policy Institute). Since the Affordable Care Act offered Americans less expenses on medical care, they were able to spend more money on basic personal necessities. Due to the increase in customer spending, there were more demand for workers, and as a result, more jobs were created at grocery stores and other businesses. Obamacare offered jobs to Americans and consequently they would defend keeping the Act. Another reason American want to keep ACA was because of its coverage of medical expenses for the financially challenged. The passing of ACA allowed previously unaffordable health care to some without thinking about the expenses.

Therefore, if ACA was taken away, it would be “devastating for family finances and hurt the economy” (Economic Policy Institute). Health insurance was covered for most Americans after the passing of Obamacare. Thus, losing it will cause increase an in family insurance prices and cause many families to lose access to medical care. Despite the long term cost of losing Obamacare, the overall short term benefit only help a minority of Americans. It only provided help for the lower class and disregarded the middle class, even though they were affected most by this. The middle class has to burden the expensive medical insurance from a hospital trip, pay medical insurance, and also pay the insurance for the lower class. Moreover, for “people with incomes under the poverty line but still too high to qualify for Medicaid in their states have no affordable program available” (NPR). For these people, they would not qualify to be covered medical expenses and unable to choose their doctors and hospitals because they no longer accept their insurance networks. In conclusion, the consequences outweigh the benefits for Obamacare and should therefore be taken back.

The current President of United States, Donald Trump, is not a supporter of Obamacare. In Trump’s campaign, he promised to lower the cost of insurance to promote a free market solution that would allow compete for business across state lines. People who generally do not support Obamacare can support Trump in arguing to repeal the Act. Another way to dispose of the Affordable Care Act is to deplete the amount of people that use it. If not many people seek out Obamacare, it would prove unnecessary and unconventional. By being covered under another insurance company not by Obamacare, it would be necessary to repeal the Act as it proves unprofitable. Lastly, people could present their problems directly to Congress to put the issue at hand in front of Congressthe President. One way in doing so is to rally and protest on the streets of Congress with simple words such as “Repeal Obamacare”. Another way is to directly write letters one’s Congressperson, arguing ways in which Obamacare has been unhelpful and not beneficial for most of the people. These activities can force the Legislative Branch and Executive Branch to find ways to repeal Obamacare or improve it with a new insurance policy.

In essence, Obamacare did not actually provide full coverage insuring all Americans. It disregarded the middle class by not providing a program that would target and help them with their medical expenses. It did, however, help lower income families and offer jobs at retail stores. The ACA was unable to help everyone and the burden fell onto the largest social class in which most Americans fall into-- the middle class. Therefore, it did not really help many Americans. This consequently forced the current President of the United States, Donald Trump, is coming up a new plan called “Trumpcare”. With the inefficiency of Obamacare with protests to repeal the Act, Trumpcare or American Health Care Act of 2017 is designed by Trump to partially change the ACA. Therefore, in the future, Americans will find Trumpcare in substitute of Obamacare and hopefully not suffer through as much burden as before.                                                 

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