Affordable Health Care 2017

Affordable Health Care

The Affordable Care Act (not the Affordable Healthcare Act) is the US healthcare reform law. The law makes healthcare and health insurance more affordable and more available to more Americans.

It seeks to make health insurance more affordable through a number of mechanisms including: new consumer protections, new rules and regulations on the healthcare industry, new marketplace for subsidized insurance, and through the expansion of public healthcare programs like Medicare and Medicaid. The Affordable Care Act also includes measures to cut the growth in healthcare spending in the US.

TIP: Sometimes people call the Affordable Care Act the Affordable Health Care Act. It’s an easy switch-up considering one of the main focuses of the law is to make healthcare (specifically health insurance) more affordable for more Americans. The proper name for the law is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or Obama Care for short.

What Does “Affordable” mean in the Affordable Care Act? The “affordable” part is denoting the many specific provisions that seek to make care more affordable in general: it denotes cost assistance (which makes coverage more affordable for those who qualify), it denotes coverage being affordable for those who were previously priced out of coverage, it denotes long-term cost curbing measures, it denotes new limits on maximums and cost sharing, it denotes exemptions for affordability, it denotes expanded benefits, kids staying on parents plans, closing the donut hole, expanding Medicaid, offering tax breaks to small businesses, etc. This doesn’t mean every family will see rates decrease under the ACA (in fact those without assistance have seen rates go up despite some curbing of cost growth). It just means that the act seeks to make coverage more affordable in general, so far a lot of the provisions are working, but there are still some sticking points.

I would suggest shopping around for plans, because it seems like your specific plan is seeing a rate hike. There may well be nothing you can do in your position, and that is unfair. But, there are lots of considerations here.

The Affordable Healthcare Act is The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

Sometimes mistakenly called the Affordable Healthcare Act, The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 is the official name for the new healthcare law. Since that name is so long people usually refer to the law as the Affordable Care Act or ObamaCare, or just say ACA, PPACA for short.

Ways the ACA Addresses Affordable Healthcare

The ACA addresses affordable healthcare and affordable health insurance in a number of ways including but not limited to:

• People with preexisting conditions can’t be charged more or denied treatment.

• There are no more annual or lifetime dollar limits on care.

• The marketplaces subsidize premium costs and out-of-pocket costs.

• A single risk pool is created giving the individual and small group markets the same buying power as large group markets.

• New rules and regulations stop insurance companies from making unjustified rate hikes.

• Women cannot be charged more than men.

• The amount insurers can discriminate price based on facts like age is restricted.

• All plans must have minimum benefits regardless of cost.

• Medicaid is expanded meaning free or low-cost insurance for more Americans.

• Young adults can stay on their parents plan until 26.

• Medicare gets a big overhaul meaning cheaper care for seniors and less costs for hospitals.

• Doctors for the most part will see their rates stay the same or, in the case of Medicaid doctors will see their rates increase.

• Hospitals are incentive to provide quality care over quantity care.