Affordable Care Act (ACA) and Its Implications to Uninsured Population

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The United States has over 330 million people that depend on one of the most complex healthcare systems globally. The healthcare system is developed by interlacing links between payers, providers, and patients attaining care. This system obtains the most funding from the government, but it has a lower life expectancy than other countries. As a result, the federal government has been working hard to derive new acts and enhance the existing ones to foster the current healthcare status. Over the years, several popular public healthcare policies, including Affordable Care Act, have significantly addressed health issues in the country.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) refers to the comprehensive healthcare policy enacted into law by the then United States President Barack Obama in March 2010. Initially, it was known as Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act or Obamacare. This law includes several healthcare policies to expand health insurance to numerous Americans. Via a series of extensions of the law and several revisions, numerous laws comprising the federal legal framework for the US health system, ACA defines basic legal security, which is still unavailable. When implemented completely, it would allow millions of individuals in the United States to acquire medical coverage from private insurance and sponsored Medicaid programs from the recently recognized marketplace (Ercia et al., 2021). The policy targeted the uninsured population and surged enrollment in Medicaid.
The act incorporates ten legislative titles. With these titles, it has three major objectives: (1) to change the private insurance market, particularly for people and small-group purchasers, (2) to enlarge Medicaid to the poor workers with approximately 133% income of the federal poverty level, and (3) to reform the process of making decisions (Silvers, 2013). ACA declares that insurance companies should provide comparable policies at equivalent rates to everyone with little variation allowed and avoid excluding the current conditions or eliminating policies. To ensure it works, the law aims to ensure the enrollment of a representative cross-section of individuals to notice the average risk claimed under the new rules.
On the other hand, the policy aims at expanding Medicaid. Notably, the Medicaid population owns the same healthcare needs either covered or in a planned expansion. Expanding Medicaid was integral for the people who were previously uninsured (Silvers, 2013). As more people without insurance coverage obtained medical coverage through Medicaid, workers realized they could acquire little premiums, aiding in lessening benefit costs and giving permission for job expansion. ACA’s third objective was to change how medical decisions were made. These included alternative organizational arrangements, comparative effectiveness research, and compensation for new delivery systems. However, the three objectives relied on private choices instead of government regulations. The act anticipated that people and groups would act within these changes to realize good access to care.
The ACA policy was enacted into law by the...