Pros and Cons of Obama Care

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Obamacare is the nickname for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).

Obamacare is one set of regulations dealing with employment that will harm employers. Any additional mandates that will be placed on business due to Medicare deductions or payroll issues will harm both business and the employee. While the state might try to provide goods for nothing, labor does and cannot. Any mandates will come out of the pay check of the employee, or alternatively, will be passed on to consumers. All employers with more than 50 employees must provide federally approved health care or face a penalty. This will increase the cost of full time workers.

Here are the basic provisions:
All Americans that are not covered by an employee plan must purchase a private plan or pay a fine.
Pre-existing conditions cannot be a barrier to buying insurance.
To assist with this mandate, there are centralized bureaus that contrast information and prices for individual plans. It acts like a brokerage.
Those under and just above the poverty line will receive federal aid for this purpose. Those living at 100% to 200% of the poverty line and below will come under a plan that can cost no more than 5% of income.
Health care reimbursements will be shifted to what is called evidence-based case rate. This means that reimbursement will follow the normal cost of the recommended treatment. This is a version of managed care.
Medicaid eligibility will be made broader.
Part of the law is to increase competition and this lower prices. Since health plans are now a federal requirement, more firms should want to participate in this market. This itself will lower priced, in theory.

RS Foster, a private researcher in contract to the government, has claimed that the above reforms will cost the federal government, up until 2019, nearly $1 trillion, about $900 billion over this time period. At the same time, certain other elements will create savings of about $450 billion. He puts lots of faith in the health care exchanges in lowering costs. Total increases in health ...