The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA or ObamaCare) is an amendment to Title 42 of the United States Code (U.S.C.) dealing with public health, social welfare, and civil rights. ACA mainly amends the Public Health Service Act signed into law in 1944 by Franklin D. Roosevelt. ACA was signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010. The law was amended one week later.
Supreme Court Decision (PDF) on the National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius case.
History
On March 2, 1972, Richard M. Nixon requested Congress act on his proposed National Health Insurance Partnership Act (Nixon, 1972).
The Massachusetts Mandated Health Insurance Law (2006) includes an individual mandate to purchase health insurance that was proposed in 1989 by Stuart Butler, PhD, of the Heritage Foundation. According to Butler, “If a young man wrecks his Porsche and has not had the foresight to obtain insurance, we may commiserate but society feels no obligation to repair his car. But health care is different. If a man is struck down by a heart attack in the street, Americans will care for him whether or not he has insurance.”
Jonathan Gruber, MIT professor of Economics, Chief architect or the Massachusetts health care reform.
A PDF is published by Kaiser Family Foundation (2012) provides a flowchart on getting coverage under the ACA.
Amendments
The Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (Pub.L. 111–152, 124 Stat. 1029) amends ACA and was signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 30, 2010.
Website
On December 2, 2013, Jay Carney told members of the White House press core that “375,000 visitors went to HealthCare.gov by 12 noon ET, almost half the total daily capacity of 800,000 that officials announced Sunday as a result of a round-the-clock effort to fix the site” (Cohen, 2013).
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
The first enrollment numbers are available from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2013). According to the report (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2013) 106, 185 Americans selected health plans.
According to HHS report released December 1, “The new management system and instrumentation have helped improve site stability, lower the error rating below 1%, increase capacity to allow 50,000 concurrent users to simultaneously use the site and will help drive continuous improvement on the site.” (2013).
Costs
According to the New York Times, “from 2007 to 2010, per-capita health care spending rose just 1.8 percent annually.” (Lowrey, 2013).
References
Butler, S. M. (1989). Assuring Affordable Health Care for All Americans. Retrieved November 16, 2013, from http://www.heritage.org/research/lecture/assuring-affordable-health-care-for-all-americans
Cohen, T. (2013, December 2). With website deadline met, Obamacare scrutiny increases. CNN. Retrieved December 2, 2013, from http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/02/politics/obamacare-website/index.html
Kaiser Family Foundation. (2012, December 26). Health coverage under the Affordable Care Act. The Journal of the American Medical Association, 308(24). Retrieved November 16, 2013, from http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1487506
Lowrey, A. (2013, December 2). The cost of health care law is seen as decreasing. New York Times. Retrieved December 2, 2013, from http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/03/business/affordable-care-act-so-far-seems-likely-to-cost-less-than-expected.html?_r=0
Nixon, R. M. (1972, March 2). Special Message to the Congress on Health Care. Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley. The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=3757.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2013, November 13). 106,185 Americans selected health plans in first reporting period of open enrollment. Retrieved November 13, 2013 from http://www.hhs.gov/news/press/2013pres/11/20131113a.html.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2013, November 13). November Enrollment Report. http://aspe.hhs.gov/health/reports/2013/MarketPlaceEnrollment/rpt_enrollment.pdf
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. (2013, December 1). Progress and performance report. Retrieved December 2, 2013, from http://www.hhs.gov/digitalstrategy/sites/digitalstrategy/files/pdf/healthcare.gov-progress-report.pdf
U.S. Government Printing Office. (2010). Public Law 111 – 152 – Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010. Retrieved November 16, 2013, from http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-111publ152/content-detail.html
U.S. Government Printing Office (2010). Public Law 111 – 148 – Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Retrieved November 16, 2013, from http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/PLAW-111publ148/pdf/PLAW-111publ148.pdf