Mar
31
Blog Post Class 18
March 31, 2015 | Leave a Comment
The issue of universal health care has been a topic of hot debate in the last few years since President Obama implemented the Affordable Care Act aka (Obama Care). The articles we read today gave an interesting perspective on an important issue in this debate of how effective is this policy and who is it helping most? According to the New York Times article “Is the Affordable Care Act Working,” in part 1, it does says that the percentage of uninsured Americans has indeed fallen overall by about 25% since it’s implementation An interesting point to note is that this reduction has not been even throughout the United States and has been more effective in some areas than in others.
According to the other New York Times article, the biggest drops in uninsured Americans were in states and counties that were governed by Democrats versus Republicans, possibly due to the fact also that the Democratic states were more likely to have expanded their medicaid programs. What is also interesting is that it is in these Republican-governed parts that according to the article, “showed significantly more insurance gains than places where voters lean strongly democratic.” I found this very ironic because the people who hated the act the most seemed to benefit from it too.
Along with this, on the issue of who benefited from Obama’s health care policy, when reading this, I was not surprised to see that women and minorities benefited the most with a significant drop in the rate of uninsured people from these groups along with people of lower incomes. The map at the end showing who remains uninsured in 2014 was also not a surprise due to the fact that previous articles said how Republican states had the lowest drop in uninsured people. Despite this, it was still very interesting to view the map and see how clearly defined the state boarders were with the association of people who still remain uninsured by location in the United States.
The New York Times article “A Perfect Fit for Some, but Not Other” gives multiple perspectives on how the Affordable Care Act has benefited or negatively affected the lives of different Americans. Read this article, some of the stories were very touching like the one about the lady was able to get her colonoscopy and start her cancer treatment. This article shows that for some, Obama care was a life saver, helping them get treatments, going back to school, etc. For other though, they view Obama care as deeply flawed and and as an additional burden on them.
Reading these articles helped me learn and understand more about the situation at hand and the debate on health insurance here in the United States. Personally, I never really understood the whole commotion over this topic whenever my relatives would talk politics with one another and I would just stay out of the conversation. After reading these articles though, I can understand why some people love the Affordable Care Act and why others couldn’t care for it. One thing that is for sure is that uninsured Americans is a problem in our country. This may not be the perfect solution to helping close that gap but it is better than nothing.
