Affordable Care Act Is Not Affordable at All

¶ … Affordable Care Act (ACA) was supposed to make health care just that -- affordable. But just a handful of years later, voices around the country are now being heard and the story is the same: health care costs have risen and services provided by health care plans have dropped. In short, the ACA is a No Care Health Care system.

As Goodman notes: "For the past 40 years real, per capita healthcare spending has been growing at twice the rate of growth of real, per capita income." What this means is that we are now paying more for health care than we actually have. With more people "demanding" coverage now, the insurance agencies are going to have "no choice" but to raise rates; that is as clear as the fact that night follows day. The "affordable" part of the bill is nothing more than a ruse: "the ObamaCare mandate amounts to about a $10,000 burden on businesses and by extension their employees" (Goodman). In fact, the burden encourages people not to work because they can get better coverage by being on Medicaid (Goodman, 2014). This plan actually promotes poverty -- it doesn't fix it.

Supporters of the ACA say that at least everyone is now insured and cite numbers like these: "the percentage of uninsured Americans declined from 18% in the middle of 2013 to 15.9% in the first quarter of 2014, its lowest in five years" (Emanuel) -- but such numbers pale in the overall picture. First, of course, more people will be insured when a law is passed mandating that they buy insurance: it doesn't mean they want it or can afford it. Second, a six-month study is no indication of lasting effects. A better indicator would be a five-year or ten-year study of insurance coverage trends. So far all the numbers have shown that the health care promises made by Obama were nothing but empty promises -- all lies, no substance.

The ACA has done little to actually assist individuals in being able to afford care. On the contrary it has worsened the situation in many cases (Durden). David Reines, for example, is a retired salesman who suffers from chronic knee pain. He states that he and his family "have insurance, but can't afford to use it" because of the high deductible attached to the insurance policy (Durden). The idea of a too high to use policy is contrary and counter-intuitive to the concept of the Affordable Care Act. With a deductible at an average cost of $3,000, the average retiree would have to go back to work just to be able to receive medical care.

In cities around the country, it is the same story: $3,000 deductible averages in Houston and Des Moines. $4,000 deductible averages in Phoenix. $5,000 deductible averages in Miami. $5,500 deductible averages in Jackson, Mississippi (Durden). This is an injustice done to the American people by the American government, which has gone to bed with the health care cartel driving the entire country into ruin, so that working class Americans are being priced out of coverage, priced out of care, and -- when they do attempt to pay for it -- they are charged outrageous fees that their forefathers never would have stood for.

What happens when a couple with insurance under the so-called Affordable Care Act actually attempts to use it? They spend half their annual income paying for it! That is what happened to Mr. and Mrs. Fanning from Texas: they paid out of pocked $500 a month for their insurance premium only to have a deductible of $10,000. So at a cost of $6,000 per year just for the right to have insurance, the Fannings got to be covered only after spending another $10,000 out of pocket. Where are the savings? On an annual income of $32,000 a year, that is half their money going to the health care cartel -- an injustice if ever there was one (Durden).

Rosenbaum indicates that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was a "watershed in U.S. public health policy" because of its aim to reduce the total number of uninsured citizens by over 50% -- resulting in coverage (whether through insurance or Medicaid) for 94% of all Americans (Rosenbaum 130). The reality is, however, that the ACA has done nothing but allow the health care cartel to "legally" steal from the little guy. I'm one little guy who knows: I pay $340 for good insurance because I have arthritis. I have been denied 3 different medication assistance programs from Optum RX, and I just received my renewal letter for a rate increase and less coverage available. That means I'm now paying more for less.