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Despite its benefits, the ACA insurance marketplace and its plans have notable issues. Perhaps the most glaring problem is mandatory coverage for everyone with pre-existing conditions. Obviously, this law was put in place to make sure everyone gets medical coverage – and at face value, this is a noble and ethical goal. However, this law also degrades the efficacy of insurance by making healthy people pay higher premiums for those with serious, permanent medical issues. Under a normal, free-market medical insurance system, these people would be viewed as “uninsurable.” The risk of covering them would simply be too great, as there is no viable way to profit from offering them insurance.
Of course, the ACA doesn’t magically create money out of thin air in order to pay for guaranteed pre-existing condition coverage. The American government may have framed this as a major ethical victory – but they didn’t actually pay for it. Instead, this financial burden was shifted onto healthy individuals who already had relatively affordable health insurance. Premiums went up, and the entire medical insurance system in the United States became less affordable.
But even that wasn’t enough to pay for guaranteed pre-existing condition coverage insurance. In addition, the U.S. government had to raise taxes for everyone to pay for this ethical endeavor – leaving Americans with less money in their bank accounts at the end of each year. Additional taxes were levied on medical equipment and pharmaceuticals.
Combined with the rising cost of living and skyrocketing inflation, plans on the ACA marketplace are quickly proving to be completely unaffordable for many Americans – especially those who don’t enjoy coverage under their employers’ group health plans. Many of those who were previously covered through work lost their plans because their employers cut their hours. If employers cut hours to a certain extent, they no longer have to pay for employer health insurance. This means that the ACA insurance not only caused people to lose coverage but also caused them to lose income. These individuals were then tasked with finding their own insurance plans on the ACA marketplace on a much lower income.
You should know that the people who designed the Affordable Care Act were wealthy politicians and medical professionals. Major medical corporations are well-known for donating to political campaigns with various lobbying groups. Initially, the ACA made it mandatory for U.S. citizens to get health insurance. This obviously represented a massive source of guaranteed profits for the same medical and insurance corporations that were donating money to the political campaigns of U.S. politicians. You can draw your own conclusions from these connections. In addition, these wealthy individuals did not have to worry about the affordability of health insurance or how the ACA might affect their ability to pay their bills.
It’s worth pointing out that the United States already adhered to a strict sense of medical ethics before the ACA was enacted. While it’s true that some expensive treatments were unaffordable for low-income individuals, no one was ever refused emergency treatment. In fact, doctors take oaths that prevent them from refusing treatment if that refusal will cause serious harm to the patient. Even without the ACA, Medicare and Medicaid have existed since 1965. These programs provide affordable coverage to low-income and elderly individuals, and they ensured that the most vulnerable Americans were getting the care they needed.
On a deeper level, the ACA feeds into the notion that cures are more profitable than preventable care. After all, exercise and healthy diets cost patients virtually nothing. But these preventative measures also mean that major medical corporations don’t make any money. It is more profitable to gear the medical industry towards expensive drugs and surgeries rather than dealing with issues early for a tiny fraction of the price.
The ACA incentivizes this approach because those with pre-existing conditions are not denied coverage. If they were denied coverage, Americans might feel encouraged to deal with issues like obesity, chronic disease, and unhealthy diets before they spiraled out of control. As it stands, there is no “reward” for pursuing a healthy lifestyle. In fact, you will be penalized with higher premiums and less affordable insurance in order to pay for those with unhealthy lifestyles.
While it’s true that the ACA covers preventative medicine, the statistics clearly show that Americans are becoming increasingly obese and laden with chronic diseases. If the ACA was intended to encourage preventative care, it has clearly failed to do so.
There are a number of alternatives to traditional health insurance plans. Perhaps the most obvious route is to simply abandon health insurance plans altogether – and many Americans have already done this. According to the latest statistics, there were about 31 million uninsured Americans in 2020. This means that more citizens are abandoning their health plans than ever before, as that number was just 27.5 million in 2018. According to another estimate, 44 million adults do not have health insurance in the United States, while 38 million do not have adequate coverage. But going through life with absolutely no health insurance is obviously incredibly risky, as you will likely incur insane amounts of medical cost debt in the case of an emergency. For non-emergency situations, you may not have access to crucial treatments.
If you can’t afford traditional health insurance plans, you don’t need to simply abandon the entire concept of medical coverage. There may be other options that can help you pay your medical bills.
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