In the US, there are the federal laws and the state laws. The federal laws preside over the legislations approved by the upper house, the administrative commands of the president, and the verdicts of the federal courts. On the other hand, the state laws preside over legislations approved by governors. In this article, a federal health care bill and a state health care bill are compared and contrasted. The bills selected are The Affordable Care Act and The Massachusetts Health Care Reform. The two bills were formulated to reduce the number of uninsured Americans.
The Affordable Care Act
The Affordable Care Act is a bill passed into law by the US president Barack Obama in the year 2010 (Burkhauser & Lyons, 2011). The act mandates all insurance companies to provide medical insurance cover to all claimants regardless of their social background, sex, race, or ethnicity. The bill covers more than 300 million individuals all over the US. The bill will be implemented within a period of 10 years.
The first key element of the act is to enhance near-universal health care coverage (Sherrill & Dicken, 2011). The second element is to enhance the quality, value, and accessibility of health care coverage. The third element is to enhance the value, efficiency of health care services, and reduce unnecessary expenditure. The fourth element is to enhance primary health care access. The last element is to come up with planned investments in public health care. In the act, several mechanisms have been outlined on how to meet the above goals.
Ever since the passage of The Affordable Care Act, the Republicans have always been opposing it. There are several reasons given by these critics as to why Americans should reject the act. Republicans argue that the full implementation of the law in the year 2014 will result in massive job losses, loss of personal sovereignty, and loss of existing insurance coverage.
The Massachusetts Health Care Reform
The Massachusetts Health Care Reform is a state bill approved on April 12 2006 (Hackmann & Kolstad, 2012). The then governor Mitt Romney approved the bill. Unlike The Affordable Care Act, Massachusetts covers 6.5 million residents. The decree required every dweller in Massachusetts to acquire a state-government-synchronized minimum ranked healthcare cover. Equally, the law required all the corporations with over 10 full-time workers to offer their employees with healthcare cover. In addition, the law offered free healthcare cover to all dwellers with incomes less than one hundred and fifty percent of the federal poverty level and sought to insure over 600,000 uninsured dwellers within the state (Starr, 2011).
Like the Affordable Care Act, this bill has attracted a number of critics. The Democrats have opposed it since its inception. The Democrats are opposed to these programs because they upheld the use of Health savings account, which they believe it would degenerate the current US healthcare crisis. According to their arguments, healthy individuals would shun these programs leaving the sick and the registered few to meet the increased cost.
The bill has been amended a number of times since its inception. Key amendments with respect to health care sector price management were undertaken in August 2012. The employer mandate was revoked last year.
Based on the above analysis, I believe that The Affordable Care Act is better than The Massachusetts Health Care Reform because the act will reduce the number of unsecured Americans in the end without much impact on the economy.
References
Burkhauser, R. V., & Lyons, S. (2011). The importance of the meaning and measurement of affordable in the Affordable Care Act. Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of Economic Research.
Hackmann, M. B., & Kolstad, J. T. (2012). Health reform, health insurance, and selection estimating selection into health insurance using the Massachusetts health reform. Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of Economic Research.
Sherrill, A., & Dicken, J. E. (2011). Health care coverage job lock and the potential impact of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Washington, DC: U.S. Govt. Accountability Office.
Starr, P. (2011). Remedy and reaction: the peculiar American struggle over health care reform. New Haven: Yale University Press.