Health Care Reform Is Coming?

It is a strange fact to ponder: health care reform has, for several decades, failed at being reformed through multiple attempts by various politicians – and is now closer than it has been in recent history to actually changing. HR 3962, otherwise known as the Affordable Health Care for America Act, makes several paradigm changes to our current health care system that, I believe, everyone should be aware of!

Firstly, it is important to realize that while my opinions on health care reform are fairly apparent in this article, I fully realize there are downsides to HR 3962, of which the two largest are expense and possible illegal alien loopholes. In an act of fairness I’d like to expand on both before discussing the positive benefits HR 3962 delivers to the American people. This bill is slated to create reductions in projected spending on Medicare by $400 billion per year, however some groups doubt these numbers. Secondly, President Obama came under fire earlier this year about health care reform and illegal aliens living and working in the United States; the President was quoted as saying he does not support covering illegal aliens in health care reform, but no concrete language was added to the bill, making its impact [and the American taxpayer's obligation to illegal aliens] unclear. Finally, HR 3962 prohibit coverage of abortions in a new government-run healthcare plan that would be established to compete with private insurers, a gross violation of human rights in the minds of many.

On the other side, in return for a few potentially sour bits, the Affordable Health Care for America Act brings about a lot of positive change for the state of America’s health care. HR 3962 helps individuals and small businesses obtain “affordable coverage,” reduces the cost of uncompensated care by $205 million and improves medicare – all in all, the bill affects over 96% of all Americans. If you already have insurance, the bill lets you comparison shop for different plans, offers discount “affordability credits” to low-income citizens who have a hard time paying their own private or occupation-offered insurance plans. The bill also prevents denial for “pre-existing conditions,” a nasty tool in the private insurance arsenal, allowing insurers to avoid liability for costly health maladies which existed before the insuree purchased his or her current health care plan.  The bill also extends coverage for young Americans, granting them the ability to stay on their parental plan up until the age of 27 – this is huge for college grads and other young people struggling to find work in a depleted economy.

Seniors can expect to see increased medicare solvency, with bad spending being cut to better provide for future medicare recipients. Medicare drug prices should also see decreases as the so called “doughnut hole” coverage gap is effectively closed. The LGBT community, however, sees one of the biggest gains from HR 3962. The bill designates the LGBT community as a “health disparities population,” opening health data collection programs and grant programs up related to sexual orientation and gender identity. The bill also ends unfair taxation of employer-provided benefits and allows for early treatment for HIV under medicaid (as opposed to waiting until the condition to develop into full-blown AIDS), something that will improve the quality of life and survival chances for individuals suffering from HIV. Comprehensive sex education will add information about STDs and avoiding teen pregnancy to school abstinence programs, a more progressive approach to sex education in public schools. Finally, non-discrimination phrasing will prohibit consideration of “personal characteristics” to the provision of health care.