Healthcare Fight

The current push by the new administration to change or eliminate Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act is alarming. The repercussions of any roll back in program funding could have a large impact on the overall wellbeing of a great part of our population. Although the versions of the legislation have failed since the current administration took office, the trend points to more attempts at revoking a great part of or social safety net. The talk of change revolves around changing the way funds are allocated to states and, among other things, limiting the amount of Medicaid funds allowed per recipient. There are many potentially detrimental issues that arise from this approach since there are segments of the population that would require more care, i.e. the elderly, and potential situations or epidemics that would not be funded, for example some future version of the current opioid crisis. But let’s focus on the current situation of the affordable care act. Most people who had insurance before the act was enacted or even shortly after have seen a spike in the cost of their premiums. This is partly attributable to the pool of ACA enrollees that had preexisting conditions as well as many who did not have health insurance for a long time and now are catching up with their medical upkeep. This raises the question, what is the real price of health care? Is it the price before or after we had the new pool of enrollees under the ACA? I would answer by saying that we as a society benefit greatly by sharing in the cost of the population that benefit from ACA. Not only from a compassionate stand point but our society would benefit greatly by being a healthier society. Should we educate or youth to take healthcare more seriously at an early age? Maybe. Maybe that will help alleviate the burden of having to deal with conditions later on in life and all of the repercussions that come with that. Maybe. But for now the price that we pay for insurance is the new market price and if this price helps cover enrollees under ACA then it is a cost well worth the cause.