Obamacare (Affordable Care Act)

Log Term - Answer

As the program is just starting now, it will likely take at least a half-decade to see the actual economic and health effects on the population.

Employers Answer

Employers with 50 or more full time employees will have to provide an "affordable" healthcare plan that's qualified by the government.

The effect that I'm seeing on this, especially for that "affordability" part, is that companies will need to gather more private information and incur additional administrative expenses. They will have to do that because the employee contribution cannot exceed 9.5% of household income.

Poor Pro - Answer

Many of he poor who previously could not afford health insurance may be able to obtain qualified coverage through the the Social Security Medicaid/Medicare systems in certain states, or may qualify for financial assistance in the form of tax credits to purchase coverage whether through an employer or individually through an exchange.

Poor Con - Answer

The effect for many poor people who can't afford health insurance and will not qualify for financial aid or Social Security is that they will be even deeper into poverty and will now be guilty of a federal misdemeanor offense to boot because they are too poor. Now, they are not just poor, but they owe a fine (declared an additional TAX by SCOTUS) to the government. This makes these poor even more poor than before ACA by imposition of what is essentially a "Poor Tax".

Additionally, the law declares that the fines collected by the I.R.S. are to be used to "enforce" the law. The fines do not provide health care to anyone, rather, the fines are to be used to root out and prosecute those others who are too poor to buy health insurance.

For the first time in history, America has crminalized poverty.

Enforcement and Administration

In order to enforce and track the above requirements, there has been an expansion of both state and federal health department bureaucracies. In addition, certain information sharing between the IRS and DHHS is required to insure that employers and individuals are complying with the coverage requirements.

ACA requirements

In plain language, the primary requirements of the ACA are:

• All US citizens and permanent residents much obtain medical insurance coverage from some source. This can be from a government-sponsored program, through an employer, directly from a health insurance company, or from a healthcare insurance company via individual states' "healthcare exchange" systems.
• Failure to obtain health insurance incurs a fine on your tax form, which starts at $95 in 2014 and rises to up to 2.5% of gross income by 2016.
• People purchasing insurance through the state exchanges may qualify for an income-adjusted subsidy from the Federal Government.
• All states must expand Medicaid insurance to all people under the Federal Poverty Level, the cost of which is paid by the Federal Government.
• States may choose to expand Medicaid to all persons up to 133% of the Federal Poverty Level, the majority of that cost being borne by the Federal Government, and the rest by the State.
• All insurance plans must meet minimum coverage and feature standards - things like free birth control and allowing family plans to cover children up to age 26. In addition, no plan can cover less than 60% of costs of healthcare, and there are maximum limits to deductables and total out-of-pocket expenses.
• Insurance companies must pay out a minimum of 85% of premiums in coverage to their subscribers (i.e. limits on profits and administrative fees for the insurance companies)
• Insurance plans cannot deny or discriminate coverage based on any pre-existing condition
• Companies employing 50 or more full time people (counting all part-time people as the appropriate fraction) must provide a qualified plan to their employees. If they do not, and the employee must seek coverage on the state exchanges, companies pay a $3000 fine per employee. In addition, employer-sponsored plans cannot force the employee to spend more than 9.5% of their gross wages on them (the employer must cover the rest of the costs).
• There are a laundry list of fees and taxes levied against various parts of the medical industry (from medical suppliers, to hospitals, to parts designers).

Yes.

In the case National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, the Supreme Court declared that the PPACA is indeed legal and Constitutional.

However, they did rule a specific clause illegal, which required the states to expand their Medicaid coverage. The ruling left that expansion as an option to the states, not a requirement.

In addition, as the PPACA is a huge, sprawling piece of legislation, specific implementation regulations issued by the responsible Executive Branch departments continue to be litigated. For instance, the regulations issued by the Dept of HHS requiring birth control coverage are currently being litigated. NONE of these related to the law itself, rather only the administrative regulation and enforcement.

It's not just Muslims that can claim exemption from the requirements of the Affordable Care Act. Any person or group may apply for a waiver or claim exemption from the penalty based on religious beliefs. This has already been settled by the courts and many waivers and extensions have already been approved. Exemptions should be filed at tax time.

Based on latest public information as of Nov 2013, may change over implementation and rules development [please update paragraph as rules are released or hit federal register]. For the moment, The exemption should be requested in writing from the designated enforcement agency, the I.R.S. Your request may be enlcosed with your tax return or upon receipt of an ACA Tax compliance notice. Your exemption will be reviewed for acceptance by the I.R.S. [No known rules have yet been established for approval/acceptance guidelines.]

Additionally, Non citizens, undocumented aliens within the borders of the U.S. are automatically exempt from the requirement to purchase coverage. This is actually spelled out within the text of the Affordable Care Act itself and is available for anyone to read.

Religious institutions (i.e. churches, NOT religious-sponsored businesses or organizations) are exempted from certain provisions of the coverage requirements (e.g. the Roman Catholic Church is exempt from providing free birth control to its priests and nuns), but are NOT exempted from any other requirements, which include providing full coverage to any non-clerical employee.

[Side note: whether or not religion allows an employer to ignore certain portions of the ACA is currently in litigation, and will be decided by the Supreme Court in 2014. However, it is extremely unlikely that SCOTUS will rule in favor of these employers, as such a ruling would change decades of legal precedence and induce massive chaos into the employment market.]

Republicans, Democrats and pretty much everyone else is for Affordable Health Care in America. Republicans at the moment though are against the Affordable Health Care Act, more popularly known as ObamaCare, as enacted into Law.

Although everyone on all sides wants Affordable Health Care and Affordable Health Insurance, there are disagreements on how to achieve it.

Answer

Republicans said no to Obamacare before they knew what was in it. Obama had a really good plan because he knew that congress would hate Obamacare. He made the bill 2,000 pages long, and gave congress only two hours to read it, that way they wouldn't know what was in it. Most democrats trusted Obama and passed the evil bill. The Republicans did not trust Obama and they all said no.