As citizens living in the once great United States of America and its providences, people should have some means of health insurance to continue the process of evolving are state through the wisdom of the elderly and the ingenuity of the newer generations of people. An enactment that allows people to have coverage more accessible than that of President George W. Bush and his predecessors was presented on March 23, 2010 by President Barack Obama known as the Patient Protection and the Affordable Care Act. While mostly being known as just the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or Obamacare, the law places significant roles that allows government to intervene in the healthcare process with limiting factors to individuals, along with businesses. Before getting into the opposition of the criticizers, for those who have little to no knowledge of what the Affordable Care Act really is, the act provides “multiple provisions that would take effect over a matter of years, including the expansion of Medicaid eligibility, the establishment of health insurance exchanges and prohibiting health insurers from denying coverage due to pre-existing conditions” (Investopedia). To expand on this notion, multiple sources gives more specific information regarding to each of the provisions that the act has to offer. According to a novel by Francisca Goldsmith, known as Libraries And The Affordable Care Act: Helping The Community Understand Health-Care Options, the roles of the government are to provide protection guarantees at both a national and federal levels, while regulating “the responsibilities of health consumers, the medical industry, and employees; without needed to be opted for state control of the market, the government enforces states of “patient right; funding for clinician education and availability; Internal Revenue Service (IRS) provisions related to health-care-related taxation; and textual clarity of insurance policy presentations” (Goldsmith 1). If more clarification is necessary, then all providences under the United States have to follow certain regulations, even if the state government is not placed in power over health care. Although the roles of the government has been properly explained thanks to the help from a reliable outside source, much of the benefits of the Affordable Care Act has not been pronounced. The benefit that comes with the most favorable outcome, especially to those adolescents that are in college or just starting to join the workforce, is the right to stay under parental insurance until the age of 26. Thanks to data, provided by Fox News, in only a span of three years, 3.4 million young Americans had coverage, bringing “the percentage of uninsured young people (ages 19 to 25) [down] from 48% in 2010 to 21% in 2012,” a remarkable feat that three out of four Americans favored (Kohn). Not only were adolescents affected greatly, but even before the act was announced, President Barack Obama focused on providing support for another act that is continued to be helped today thanks to the contributions of the Affordable Care Act, which will further be analyzed during while the discussion of prime examples that the Affordable Care Act has helped with the people of the United States. With so many more regulations left to understand for the Affordable Care Act, the rest will also be separated throughout the proposal, pinpointing either counterarguments that come without thorough reasoning or problems that were unavoidable without any prior knowledge of how the system of laws would operate. Although Americans rebel over the tradeoffs of the Affordable Care Act, the United States does not have a suitable replacement program or substantially better opportunity costs for the act.

Although, traditionally, the counterarguments for any proposal would be at the end, just before the conclusion/closing remarks, it is imperative that the audience knows what other Americans’ negative thoughts are about the act, along with getting more information that is critical for fully understanding while they have faith in their beliefs. To start with, one of the major topics that Americans tend to complain about is the cost of owning health insurance thanks to the Affordable Care Act. When it is true that prices did rise during of the Affordable Care era, Americans don’t try to see the reasoning behind it and thus, forced more payments on themselves. Immediately after the enactment, the Affordable Care Act allowed Americans to qualify for some form of subsidy based on their income along with the cost of health coverage in their particular state; “according to a subsidy calculator created by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a 27-year-old living in Houston, Texas, who earns just $15,000 a year could sign-up for a mid-level plan for about $300 per year with the help of subsidies. Without subsidies, that plan would cost $2,400 per year” (Kohn). Even though people still didn’t want to use those subsides, they still used Medicaid, which is just a subsidy to a larger degree, while the uninsured did not care that their free trips to the emergency rooms were putting a strain on the rest of the population’s funds (Kohn). Of course, with so many that refuses to help, causing wasted money to form, the government must provide others mean to recover it, such as increase prices, but that is not the only reason why prices raised. “New pharmaceuticals are particularly expensive because, before reaching the marketplace, they must go through a rigorous and costly research-and-development process;” however, no matter how many articles were researched on the counterarguments involving cost, none spoke of any means of cost increase, just how the rates were increasing since the Affordable Care Act was enacted (Pipes, page 74). With this information, the cost of healthcare would still have raised over the years, but instead would affect the individuals with insurance much more greatly than from separation the Affordable Care Act was able to produce with a more quantitative amount of Americans insured, or the payments would come as an increase of taxes. There is no excusing the fact that the Affordable Care Act’ prices has increased throughout its duration, through mistakes or uncontrollable means, but to blame the Affordable Care Act on a singular viewpoint creates too much bias that can be used to invalidate the credibility for the opposing argument.

The next counterargument that should be revealed is particularly one that has justification behind their claims. The Affordable Care Act announced that each state would have its own health insurance exchanges. With this, competition could form within the states, along with insurance being accessible for the people were not able to go online for one of the exchanges. However, after a particular amount of time passed, the exchanges began to crash, wasting billions of dollars that were funded to provide them. Without any real reasoning for why the exchanges failed in such a terrifying way, speculations such as the “Republicans [were] in such a desperate rush to try and defund ObamaCare before October 1 — even if it means holding [the] economy hostage and even if most voters, including Republicans, oppose the repeated and wasteful defunding attempts” (Kohn). With no testaments from creditable sources other than Fox News, the claim in looking unfavorable, although it was made before the exchanges were even available to the public, so unless there is some form of conspiracy, bias doesn’t play too much of a role with the reasoning. However, although the exchanges began shutting abruptly early and caused the United States numerous amounts of wealth, the idea behind the exchanges were not bad ideas in the slightest. It is true that this was a negative experience for the Affordable Care Act, but instead of throwing away all the years spent on trying to make the act desirable for all, an examination on the causes behind the failure would be of greater interest. Since the Affordable Care Act has already eliminated the majority of competition for health insurance, due to the fact that insurance had to meet standards that would enforce closure if not met, exchanges would be the simplest form of checks and balances until more insurance companies can provided better policies. 

The final counterargument that should be discussed is on the topic of Medicare. As for the counterargument for this specific topic, most Americans, especially the Republicans, think the way Medicare was prior to the Affordable Care Act was efficient enough as it is and changes would hinder the lives of the elderly, while not providing enough support for other age categories. However, there are various amounts of restrictions that the Affordable Care enforced on Medicare to provide better regulations for Americans. As for seniors, the Affordable Care Act provides discounts on drugs of “up to 50 percent for those who reach the Medicare prescription plan's coverage gap; requir[es] insurers to fully pay, with no deductibles or co-payments, for numerous screenings and other preventive care such as mammograms, colonoscopies and vaccinations,” with an annual wellness exam (Better Medicare, and More). Although seniors get special requirements that other Americans cannot possess, the act does provided reforms that help the people in general. Such reforms consist of reducing the “overpayments to private insurers' Medicare Advantage plans and the price increases for providers” and providing new insurance models based on incentives (Harrop). Another major regulation is providing insurance to citizens with pre-existing conditions. However, another aspect that opposing Americans have with the Affordable Care Act is the reduction of payments for Medicare. Although this does look like a rather difficult decision to accept, the reasoning behind it determines the outcome. While the act is limiting the influence that Medicare has on providing hospitals, the explanation for the influence was to cause hospitals to use their funds more efficiently. According to Opposing Viewpoints in Context, The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission revealed that areas where insurers have “more market power over hospitals” find themselves in financial pressure, causing hospital expenses to lower, while “Medicare payments appear to be adequate” (Zuckerman). This shows that the influence of Medicare affects the national spending through excess funds being used, while the funds could be used more efficiently to provide insurances to all that needs it, without concern for pre-existing conditions.

There are various amounts of examples that can be seen from just the workers’ viewpoint, without even the need to have testaments on how the Affordable Care Act has benefited the lives of the common people. Since there are regulations that haven’t been discussed prior to this discussion, let’s begin with of the enactments that made life easier for the middle to low class. The Affordable Care Act requires business that have more than fifty employees to provide health insurance for everyone. This allows benefits that can actually protect workers from injury outside of the workplace, giving the workers more incentive to do their jobs more efficiently. Some thought that providing health insurance would cause unemployment rates to increase; however, there is no evidence that “ObamaCare has led to companies slashing full-time workers” (Kohn). While on the topic of incentives for businesses, the Afford Care Act also gave tax credits to small businesses if they insured their workers, causing many to become insured. Before the Affordable Care Act was even established, as previously stated, President Barack Obama provided support of up to 32.8 billion dollars to the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, which was designed to “provide health insurance to children in households with incomes too low to afford private insurance, but too high to qualify for Medicaid,” but unfortunately was used on adults more than children before the president intervened (Pipes, page 18). 

Now that most of the general information has been taken care of, the main point in the argument for the proposal can finally be discussed. Does the Affordable Care Act need to be repealed, reformed, or make no changes? Before that answer can be determined, the first thing that must happened is to think whether there is a sufficient insurance plan that were could change to that can eliminate any problems that the general problem has with the act, without making any newer/worse problems as a result. The results for the second question is definitely no when it comes to have no new problems, while not having the general ideas to fix problems without making newer ones. Americans want to repeal the Affordable Care Act without thinking of the consequences that would come afterwards. If the Affordable Care Act were to be repealed at this very moment, Americans would have to deal with whatever health insurance policies are still intact, since, as previously stated, the Affordable Care Act eliminated a fair amount of the competition with its standards. Not only would they remaining health insurances be able to increase their prices due to loss of competition, but many Americans that couldn’t afford it would be either insured or be forced to insure with some shady company. There are reasons why the Affordable Care Act have problems besides the normally rules of opportunity cost, which states that every choice that is made must have some kind of reaction that is willing to be lost.  

The Republican National Committee (GOP) are not in favor of the Affordable Care Act for different reasons than the public concerns of higher deductibles and lower premiums for more people to access. According to Ezra Klein, Republicans does not want many people to be covered by the government, while “deregulat[ing] insurance, so that insurance can have high deductibles” (Klein). This means that the Republican National Committee does not care about the concerns for the public, rather they want insurance to cost more to satisfy their own quotas. Everyone knows that the Affordable Care Act has both good and bad qualities to it, but understanding that the Republican National Committee is the cause for this and actually dislikes the act for the positive aspects, would getting another act that is observed by them any better? Honestly speaking, the opportunity costs for healthcare do not exceed the benefits of the Affordable Care Act, so only if the opportunity costs can be better than the current situation should the Affordable Care Act be reformed, but not repealed. 

Other than just using the regulations as examples for the benefits of the Affordable Care Act, testaments were made to show their appreciation for the act. The first is from a mother that recently figured out that her son developed testicular cancer. Unable to pay for his own health insurance, if it wasn’t for the regulation that allows people under the age of 26 to still be covered under their parents’ insurance policies, he surely would had to pay for all of the expenses out-of-pocket. At the very end of the article that this experience was presented in, the young man with testicular cancer, known as Duncan, announced that when he vote in the future, he will be thinking that “he'll vote for my health insurance. That's pretty much it" (Lussenhop). Other testaments were made during that article, both positive and negative, but since neither were related to the situation, those will not be included. However, there is another testament about a family that claims to have paid for insufficient coverage until it was too late. In better detail, after his wife was diagnosed with cancer, bills began to pile up and the deductibles were not being paid because of the fine print of their insurance companies. Eventually, his wife's cancer became a serious “preexisting condition,” in which they couldn’t “stand a chance of switching insurance carriers or upgrading our policy, until that day if and when Obamacare… becomes a reality” (Stein). This example verifies that people desired the Affordable Care Act, due to other insurance policies would not cover his family, and since such a negative experience happened outside the act, what could make the common people of America believe that they are not at risks as well? Hopefully, the two testaments, along with the realization that common people benefit differently than from the act, helps introduce the audience into a new viewpoint for the Affordable Care Act.

The Affordable Care Act has various amounts of regulations that provides benefits to Americans, such as adolescents being under parental insurance plans until the age of 26, and anyone can be insured, with no concerns about pre-existing conditions. Counterarguments has been determined through failings of the act, but with Medicare being more involved without overpayments and understanding of the difficulties that would affect any insurance situation instead of having one viewpoint of criticism. Since it is obvious to see that there are problems with the Affordable Care Act, such as the experience with the insurance exchanges and other tradeoffs, the people of America should realize that there are those that don’t seek the same requirements as others, so to justify the thoughts of the many, reforms should take place within the act until an law with better opportunity costs arrives. Since there were people willing to make testaments about the act, then that means the Affordable Care Act cannot be that terrible. With the concrete ideas of the Affordable Care Act, along with the fact the Republican National Committee doesn’t want insurance that the majority of people claim they want and with no others healthcare plans that would benefit the people in ways that he tradeoffs would seem insignificant, the most that should happen to the Affordable Care Act is a slight reform, only if the possibilities for the tradeoffs were good enough that it would make a significant change to the lives of the public.
