Patient Protection And The Affordable Care Act

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act provides: 

1.      Provisions prohibiting insurance companies from arbitrarily cancelling health care benefits; 

2.      Provisions prohibiting insurance companies from placing caps on health care benefits; 

3.      That children can stay on their family health insurance program until the age of 26; 

4.      That 50% of the “donut hole” cost for drugs be eliminated; 

5.      Health maintenance costs at 100% without a co-pay; 

6.      Electronic medical records required in an effort to reduce health care costs; 

7.      Health care subsidies for needy Americans; 

8.      The expansion of Medicaid for needy Americans; and 

9.      Provisions to ensure broad participation so that costs may be distributed over a larger base. 

The Act is not perfect, there were problems in its initial implementation, and it needs to be improved. The first six of these (1-6) apply to all health insurance policies.   Dropping these six patient protection measures, deleting “Patient Protection” from the title and renaming it “Obama Care'” then trashing it at every opportunity regardless of its merits does not appear to be an attempt to improve our health care system.  Isn’t it about time that we recognize that patient protection is an important part of the Act?  

Ron Darden