Obamacare's Negative Impact on the Middle Class

PPACA, an Affordable Healthcare Act That Isn't-So-Affordable

Cassadie Rushing

COMM/215

February 16, 2015

Lorin Laverde

PPACA, an Affordable Healthcare Act That Isn't-So-Affordable

As every American knows by now, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), a.k.a. “Obamacare”, is a new law that was passed and set in to effect in 2010, requiring that every American citizen be covered by some sort of health insurance through a health insurance exchange (or simply put – a marketplace for insurance companies) set up and regulated by the state. Whether this insurance is through employers or purchased independently from a major insurance company, the goal was to be sure that every citizen of the United States has affordable health insurance coverage. However, many Americans, though outraged, accept this new law and abide by it in order to evade a rather vexatious fine; but why are we so heated over the idea of affordable healthcare? The Patient Protection and Affordable Healthcare Act does more harm than good for the middle class hereafter by administering a requirement to obtain the “minimum essential coverage” and subjecting all employed Americans to a compulsory Medicare tax. The hard truth is, many Americans are misinformed by the media about the implicitly adverse effects that the PPACA has on the people of this nation.

        For one thing, the Affordable Care Act is anything but affordable. This is the first of many deceptions the American people govern regarding the healthcare reform. Enrollees at Healthcare.gov are under the pretense that they can purchase quality medical care with the help of federal subsidies. However, what many people do not understand is that Section 36B of the Internal Revenue Code (enacted as part of the PPACA) authorizes federal tax-credit subsidies “for health insurance coverage that is purchased through an Exchange established by the State under section 1311 of the ACA” (King v. Burwell, 2014). Broken down into plain English, the PPACA only offers the tax-credit subsidies through a STATE regulated marketplace for insurance companies. As of January 21st, 2015, a poll conducted by the Huffington Post shows that 47% of Americans were opposed to the healthcare reform in contrast to the 39% who were in favor of it (Huffington Post, 2015). Because of this steady trend of voters opposing Obamacare since the PPACA’s introduction in 2009, “almost six-in-ten uninsured Americans live in [one of the 27] states that haven’t set up their own health-insurance exchanges under the Affordable Care Act” (Desilver, 2013). This nation-wide deception jeopardized the employment and healthcare coverage premiums of millions of Americans when people started buying more expensive healthcare coverage under the notion that they were guaranteed these tax-credit subsidies.