On March 23, 2010 the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was passed and finally reformed an ailing healthcare system that was broken. As the two year anniversary of the bill’s passage approaches, the relentless cries of socialism and big government still continue. Many of those criticisms are a mix of fear mongering and outright lies.
Two years later, the healthcare system has improved significantly and the healthcare law has been a resounding success in its early phases of implementation. Two million young adults now have healthcare that did not before the act due to provisions allowing children to stay insured until they are 26.
Medicaid funding has been increased and the qualifying standards loosened so that the poor and unemployed have greater access to healthcare. All of these provisions in the bill have been a resounding success, and have been widely used already.
However, Republicans have used the tried and true tactics of fear and lies to distort the intent of the bill. If I took everything Republicans have said about the healthcare reform law literally, the bill would establish death panels for the elderly and disabled, ration healthcare and destroy the healthcare system.
The reason for these outlandish and wild accusations is that Republicans need to create a boogeyman in order to convince the average voter that the bill is bad. It is hard to create opposition when a lawmaker says they disagree with an obscure provision such as providing end of life counseling, but it is easy when that lawmaker says they oppose implementing “death panels.”
Currently, the law has been challenged in courts across the country with many ruling that the law is constitutional and a few ruling only the individual mandate unconstitutional.
The lead plaintiff in one lawsuit, Mary Brown, is a 56 year old woman who is the poster child for someone who would stand to benefit from the healthcare law. Brown and her husband are both uninsured and think the government shouldn’t have a say in that decision, believing that it’s their right to choose whether or not to buy insurance. They filed for bankruptcy last fall citing mounting debts that include $4,500 in unpaid medical bills.
What Mary Brown has shown is the rank hypocrisy underlying many of the claims made by those who oppose healthcare reform. Conservatives argue that American taxpayers should not have to pay for the healthcare of others or be forced into being insured by the individual mandate. Mary Brown is already forcing everyone else to pay for her medical bills regardless by defaulting on her debts and raising the costs for everyone else.
If Brown had been insured, she would not have accumulated such a large debt that would be passed on to everyone else in the form of higher premiums and medical costs.
In a world where people actually faced the true consequences of decisions such as forgoing health insurance, Brown would also have to accept that society should not have to pay for her medical bills if she cannot afford them due to poor choices. If she decides not to buy insurance, we should not have to pay her medical bill even if it results in her death.
This is, however, the real world and we as a society have established that no one should die because of lack of access to healthcare. Healthcare should be a basic human right.
The largest source of contention in the healthcare law is the individual mandate. The individual mandate ensures that all American citizens should have some form of health insurance or face a small fine from the government. Without the mandate, anyone can just avoid being insured until they are sick and need medical care and stick everyone else with the bill. It ensures that everyone is personally responsible for their healthcare.
The Republican presidential candidates have been especially harsh in their criticism of healthcare reform; none more so than Rick Santorum.
Santorum has a special needs daughter that requires constant medical care. Despite this, he is in favor of excluding those with pre-existing conditions from health insurance and charging those with pre-existing conditions more. Santorum, when questioned on Fox News why he was the less charitable of the presidential candidates, stated that he did not have much to give due to the costs of caring for their daughter which their insurance company will not cover.
It makes no sense that Santorum advocates for insurance companies to be free to cover whomever and whatever they please when he himself has been drained financially due to these policies. Santorum is fortunate that he has the financial resources to care for his daughter. However, other Americans are not so lucky. A Harvard study found that almost 45,000 people die in the United States each year from lack of healthcare coverage.
If healthcare reform implementation continues to be extremely successful as it has been, lacking adequate care will become a thing of the past. There is good evidence that it will. Republican Mitt Romney instituted almost the same exact reforms in Massachusetts as governor in 2006.
Massachusetts now leads the nation in healthcare with 97.4 percent of their population insured. The law has been a resounding success and served as a model for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
After cutting through all of the rhetoric and outlandish accusations, the healthcare reform law that passed was a centrist and moderate bill that has expanded access to healthcare and lowered costs for millions of Americans. The future will bring even more success, but these are still small steps and fixing such a broken system will require even further reform.
Alex Caraballo can be reached at acaraballo21@gmail.com.