The American Health Care Act in 2017
The raging debate about replacing the Affordable Care Act with Affordable Care Act is basically about redistribution of wealth in United States. The debate is about how a society should provide for poor and vulnerable citizens and the amount of resources that the powerful and the rich should give to the poor. The argument should be based on the fact that health insurance is supposed to enable spreading of health care in the society, hence, the argument by the republicans that redistribution of wealth is immoral fail to acknowledge insurance is in its self-redistributive.
The Affordable Care Act ensures that the medical cost burden is redistributed to healthy from the sick , with provisions that prohibits insurers from refusing coverage for individuals with pre-existing health conditions. The ACA makes sure that everyone can access health coverage whether poor or rich with support of new taxes (Kliff, 2017). The effect of the replacement is that wealthy and health people will benefit while the lower-income and sicker ones will be disadvantaged. The wealth will be granted big tax breaks while many families in America will bear huge costs if the intended replacement takes place.
On the other, the American Health Care Act may come with a positive implication that includes reduction in health care costs. Health care costs have been rising since the introduction of Affordable care with insurance firms in many states withdrawing from resulting health-care exchanges (Tumulty, 2017).It has been observed that with the previous Act, one may possess an insurance card and yet it may not be taken for coverage. What these implications imply is that a balance has to be sought between individual interest and health-care affordability.
Reference
Kliff, S., (2017).The American Health Care Act: the Republicans’ bill to replace Obamacare, explained. http://www.vox.com/2017/3/6/14829526/american-health-care-act-gop-replacementTumulty, K., (2017).The debate over the Affordable Care Act is really a debate over wealth redistribution. Retrieved from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/the-debate-over-the-affordable-care-act-is-really-a-debate-over-wealth-redistribution/2017/03/07/36b7d048-034e-11e7-ad5b-d22680e18d10_story.html?utm_term=.c8470f72ae77