Health Care Reform Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words - 1

Health Care Reform - Essay Example The subsidies will enable the low earners to purchase private health cover. The legal provision also creates room for the development of exchanges for individuals that will be willing to buy cover. The bill also expands accessibility to health insurance by prohibiting insurance firms from denying cover to anyone based on pre-existent conditions (Andrews, 2012). The bill also makes provisions for the creation of an experts’ panel to limit reimbursements to only effective treatments and offer incentives to providers as a way to persuade them to â€Å"bundle† their services instead of charging by singled out procedures (Andrews, 2012). The reform redefines the way Americans purchase health cover by requiring all Americans without employee cover to buy privately provided health insurance cover or pay a tax percentage of 1%-2.5% (Andrews, 2012). Americans that cannot afford cover and do not have one from employers will either go into Medicaid/Medicare or receive tax credits to make the private purchases. Financing of the Affordable Care Act The Affordable Care act will be funded through government funding, taxes and budget cuts. The taxes will include 9% from Medicare and unearned income tax on earnings above $250 000. The taxes will be levied on a sliding scale. Therefore, the more one earns, the higher the taxation. Insurance companies and employers with over 50 fulltime employees will be taxed to fund the plan. Taxes will also be implemented for medical supply companies and pharmaceuticals. Modest estimates by the non-partisan congressional budget office from 2010 showed that health insurance companies would pay $2 billion, medical suppliers would pay $2.3 billion, and pharmaceuticals would pay $2 billion by 2011, and this amount was expected to go up to $10 billion by 2017. Reduction on wasteful spending is also expected to contribute to the budget. The taxes designated. The efficiency that the bill introduces is also expected to cut costs and incr ease efficiency, and therefore; contribute to the offset of the costs incurred. Influence in Legislation and Policy Making The policies relating to Federal changes on pre-existent conditions’ coverage in insurance made a significant part of the overarching initiative, which led to the legislation of the act. Generally, Democrats, liberals and physicians were supportive and still persist in supporting health reforms related to this major reform (Harrison & Gerard, 2010). On the other hand, insurance companies, Republicans and conservatives were opposed to the reform proposal, and they have been actively seeking to repeal on the act that contains the reform details. The opposing forces are still actively attempting to change the main elements of the act. In the initial stages of the proposed reforms, the public was overwhelmingly supportive based on statistics from public opinion polls. However, currently the public is fairly split on the issues surrounding the reform process ( Harrison & Gerard, 2010). Notably, there were also various advocacy organizations that supported the legislation of the act. These included the â€Å"American Association of Retired Persons† (AARP) (Roy, 2012). The Potential Effects of the Affordable Care Act on the Economy The act presents a number of welcome economic effects as well as some unwelcome economic e