Five Reasons Obamacare is a Failure (2024)

FAQs

What is the downside of Obamacare? ›

The ACA has been highly controversial, despite the positive outcomes. Conservatives objected to the tax increases and higher insurance premiums needed to pay for Obamacare. Some people in the healthcare industry are critical of the additional workload and costs placed on medical providers.

More businesses (especially small employers) will drop coverage as insurance becomes unaffordable, leading to an ever growing number of uninsured. Entitlement spending for Medicare and Medicaid will swamp state and federal budgets, threatening economically crippling tax increases or devastating spending cuts.

The ACA helped millions of people gain access to health insurance; uninsured rates dropped by more than half from 17.8 percent in 2010 to an all-time low of 7.2 percent in the second quarter of 2023.

Low-income, privately insured people had the worst results in the analysis, seeing no benefit from the ACA: They had the highest rate of catastrophic health care spending before the law passed in 2010 and continued to have it in 2017: 35% compared with 8% for people on Medicaid.

For those in these lowest-income percentiles, gaining Medicaid coverage virtually eliminated out-of-pocket health care spending; thus, the ACA increased average income as a percentage of the federal poverty level by 18.8 percent, 13.0 percent, 8.4 percent, and 8.4 percent among those in the tenth, twentieth, thirtieth, ...

Enhanced and Expanded ACA Marketplace Subsidies: Another controversial aspect of the ACA was the so-called “subsidy cliff,” where people with incomes over 400% of the federal poverty level were ineligible for financial assistance on the Marketplace and, therefore, would have to pay a large share of their household ...

Together, CON and COPA laws, as well as the ACA restrictions on POHs, have been associated with a host of unintended consequences, such as the aggregation of market power in increasingly larger health care facilities, limited access to care, and higher costs for patients.

Repealing the ACA, in particular the expansion of Medicaid to low-income adults, would reverse major gains in financial security. Within the first two years of the ACA's expansion of Medicaid, medical debt sent to collection agencies dropped by $3.4 billion, and there were 50,000 fewer medical bankruptcies.

They oppose the mandate that all Americans must have health insurance (the individual mandate), and they oppose a government role in health care. Yet Medicare, a mandatory insurance for seniors administered by the federal government since 1965, is overwhelmingly approved by the American public.

Did the ACA actually help? ›

The ACA's coverage expansions drove a precipitous decline in the uninsured rate, which fell and eliminating prior barriers in the private insurance market for people with pre-existing health conditions, the ACA provided new options for many people who lack access to affordable employer-sponsored health benefits.

Does Obamacare still exist? Despite many votes on whether or not to repeal it, the ACA still exists and is still the law of the land for healthcare coverage. The ACA has gone through some small changes and modifications since its inception.

United States President Donald Trump is no fan of the Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as Obamacare. He wanted it gone, replaced by the American Health Care Act — a.k.a. Trumpcare.

On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, putting in place comprehensive reforms that improve access to affordable health coverage for everyone and protect consumers from abusive insurance company practices.

Free Health Insurance

Here are some of the upsides of Obamacare: Regulated Coverage: Before the ACA, there weren't many rules around what an insurer had to cover. Now that the Marketplace is regulated, you'll notice better coverage all around, including access to mental health services , maternity care, and more.

Monthly premiums for Affordable Care Act (ACA) Marketplace plans vary by state and can be reduced by premium tax credits. The average national monthly health insurance cost for one person on an Affordable Care Act (ACA) plan without premium tax credits in 2024 is $477.

Limited Choice

A disadvantage of public health insurance systems is the potential for restricted availability of healthcare providers and treatment alternatives. This could limit a patient's ability to choose their preferred doctors or hospitals.