It's hard to completely understand how this change will impact us each specifically. The Obama campagin has a tool on their website where you can put in specific factors about the health care you have now and it will generate a read out of how your care will change. Linked here
The Pros include: (taken from Slate, the Wall Street Journal and Barack Obama and Mitt Romney's campaign websites)
- An increase in benefits for the uninsured
- Senior citizes will gain acess to billions of dollars in prescription benefits
- Everyone withinsurance will get free preventive serices
- It will increase coverage for those with a pre-existing condition
- Working families are protected from losing their health care or being forced into bankruptcy when a family member gets sick or is in an accident
- adult children can stay on their parent's health plan until the age of 26
- Mammograms, pap smears and immunixations will be covered without a co-pay including breastfeeding support, contraception, HPV testing, and domestic volence screenings
- Insurance companies are now required to justify rate hikes, and consumers have the ability to appeal to an independent third party when insurance companies refuse to cover services or care
- Starting in 2014, all Americans will have access to affordable health insurance no matter their circumstances—whether they change jobs, lose their job, decide to start a business, or retire early
- For patients, there will be fewer cash payments and lower fees.
- States can opt out of the act
- The law is expected to reduce the deficit by $127 billion from 2012 to 2021.
- The act forces an insurer to sell a policy to someone who is already sick, which severely limits the insurer's right to charge that person a higher premium
- The bill, itself more than 2,400 pages long, relies on a dense web of regulations, fees, subsidies, excise taxes, exchanges, and rule-setting boards to give the federal government extraordinary control over every corner of the health care system
- States can opt out of certain sections of the act
- It you don't purchase health insurance you are responsible for a tax
- Flexible Spending Accounts will shrink to a maximum of $2,500
- You will only be able to deduct a medical expense from your taxes if it exceeds 10% of your gross income
- The costs are unknown
- It is not known exactly how much this act will cost. Speculation on both sides report a drastic increase in governement spending while democrats boast a reduction in spending and the overal deficit. It remains unknown.
- The effect of “comparative effectiveness” practice guidelines on individual practioners. This is a part of the act that is aimed at improving quality while reducing costs. Republicans argue that it will be a way to manipulate provider freedom. This is explained in more detail in this NYT article. Click here
