Obamacare

This is a hypothetical example used to show the effects on any one specific health insurance company, and the sources referenced are the same as those identified in round one. As for the information in this round, each section must be broken down. First, the transfer of funds through insurance companies. While the ACA requires insurance companies to spend 10% less on themselves and 10% more on their patient's healthcare costs, this does not translate to a greater reimbursement for doctors. In fact, as previously stated, the federal government only reimburses 56% of the market price for healthcare procedures while five years ago, private insurers would reimburse over 70%. On the other side of these numbers is the 10% taken away from insurance companies. The 10% is a full third of any private insurance companies" previous income. The fact is, a company cannot withstand a cut to one-third of their income without making internal cuts themselves " most importantly, cuts to their own employees. Healthcare companies can make efficiency improvements as any modern business can, but certainly not to make up for a cut of this size to their income. The next argument needs further clarification. Referring to private healthcare companies, it was stated that, "just because they have patients with pre-existing conditions doesn"t mean they"ll just pay the doctors less, they have plenty of money and with all the new people being added they"ll have even more." The point made here is backwards; the new citizens being added to private healthcare coverage are the reasons doctors are being paid less and others under the same coverage will continue to pay increasing premiums. The ACA requires private insurance companies to accept applicants with pre-existing conditions. The reasons for their rejection in the first place were that they used up more of the pool of available funds than they added to it. In other words, their medical expenses were greater than what they paid the insurance company. Now that insurance companies are legally obligated to cover these people, the insurance companies must find ways to cushion the amount of funds drawn on these people. The only ways to go about this are to raise the cost of insurance for everyone, and/or reimburse doctors for less than they could previously rely on. As far as regulation, this is healthcare not the Civil War. As explained and defended, private healthcare companies did not require government interference to the extent of the ACA, and the country, specifically doctors, certainly did not need the government to enter the health insurance market with public coverage options that reimbursed doctors with only 56% of the market rate of the procedures. The government is absolutely not being cheated out of their money while they spend billions of dollars through the ACA trying to reform the system, while entering the market with poor business ethics themselves. Finally, the ACA is still to blame for current inefficiencies. The recently opened online health insurance marketplace is a disaster for Democratic intentions. The poorly developed website was built to handle tens of thousands of users at a time, however the site flatlined with only a few hundred users online, and the site crashed just after midnight on October 1st, the day of its opening. President Obama himself recognizes the huge failure of the site, saying there is "no sugarcoating" the issue. He made a statement to Americans to go back to the "old-fashioned way" and sign up in person or over the telephone. In other words, after massive spending and months of development, the online marketplace failed due to the government"s inability to communicate with the two leading contractors hired to design the website. Instead of leaving the management duty of the website to a qualified company, the government took it upon themselves to oversee the development of the website, allowing for its failure immediately following its "grand opening." Bohn, Kevin. "Report: Healthcare website failed test ahead of rollout." CNN. CNN Politics. October 2013. Web. 23 October 2013. Buzenberg, Bill. "Obamacare facts separated from spin by Wendell Potter, FactCheck.org." www.publicintegrity.org. 15 Aug. 2013. Web. 14 Oct. 2013. Johnson, Avery. "What You Need to Know About the Affordable Care Act." online.wsj.com. 28 Sep. 2013. Web. 14 Oct. 2013. Lazo, Luz. "Left Behind: stories from Obamacare's 31 million uninsured." Washington Post. 8 September 2013. Politics. Web. "The Impact of Obamacare." Heritage Foundation-Leadership for America. 2013. Web. 16 October 2013. G. F. Anderson and P. Markovich, Multinational Comparisons of Health Systems Data, 2010 (New York: The Commonwealth Fund, July 2011).