Wednesday, November 12, 2014

Article Response #10

Article Response #10 - 'US healthcare enrollment goal lowered'

        BBC News has reported that the United States Secretary of Health Sylia Burwell has now lowered the expectations that were previously set last year for the new "ObamaCare," or federal health insurance plan. The previous expectations, set by the unbiased Congressional Budget Office, were set to about 13 million people to be signed up for health insurance from government websites by March. The lowered expectations now reflect a forecast of about 9 million people to sign up for the same date of March- a huge 4 million person downsize in expectancy.
       While this lowering of expectations is controversial, this is hardly the first time that ObamaCare has made headlines. The Obama administration has had an extremely difficult couple years in the roll out of the Affordable Care Act. The act has unfortunately had many stumbles, which because of the partisan nature of the act, has been sensationalized by the media and by the Republican party as a political tool.        
     One of the top controversies that ObamaCare has encountered includes the occurrence of millions of people who have had their previous health care plans cancelled via their insurance providers. This is after President Obama promised that this would not happen when the act went into effect. Due to this controversy, the Obama administration has received tremendous backlash from not only Republicans, but Democrats as well (including the still influential former President Bill Clinton).
     There has been a response from the Obama administration on this matter, though one may say it has largely been an ineffective fix. As stated in my article analysis a few weeks back, BBC has reported that large employers like Walmart have begun to opt out of paying medical insurance for employees after the implementation of ObamaCare. Walmart has done this by prohibiting employees to gain full-time status by keeping their hours below 45 hours a week. The employer in turn is able to save money and push the responsibility (and cost) to the federal government.
      Due to the long Congressional fight over the legislation and the controversy that have emerged since the act's conception, it is certain that these factors have played a large part in the lower of expectation for participation from citizens.

Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-29997986
http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/193777-top-five-obamacare-controversies-of-2013




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