Affordable Care Act Complaints

         There are many complaints surrounding the Affordable Care Act, more popularly known as Obamacare, by many Americans. The top four complaints, according to money.cnn.com/2013/10/21/news/economy/obamacare-complaints/, are not being able to log in on the healthcare.gov website, personal information on applications being sent to insurers has been incorrect, the costs being too high, and employers raising premium costs due to the Affordable Care Act. Other concerns, according to healthcarereform.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=003725, include, but are not limited to, the shortage of physicians, and the Constitutionality of the bill. Though there are as many pros and praises as there are cons and complaints, for the sake of this report I will be focusing on the cons and complaints concerning the Affordable Care Act.

Complaints about the Affordable Care Act 

         The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is a federal health reform bill that was signed in March, 2010, passed into law October, 2013, and will take effect January 01, 2014. The act is supposed to help American citizens by making health care easily accessible to all Americans, regardless of age, or preexisting medical conditions. The ACA is also designed to expand the health workforce, and curb rising health care costs. The main purpose is, though, to give the millions of uninsured Americans health insurance (some for the first time in their lives).

         Undoubtedly, there are many Americans who are excited about the idea of finally having a choice in which health care provider would better suit them. There are also many who are happy to finally be able to have health coverage, as they have never been able to obtain health care coverage due to preexisting conditions. Americans will be universally insured, and all citizens will be treated by medical physicians; or so it seems.

         Since the ACA passed into law, many Americans have attempted to sign up for their health care through the official government website, healthcare.gov. Unfortunately, many of the gun-ho Americans who support the health care reform have started siding with those who do not support the ACA; stunned that even though the law has been in the preparation process for just over 2  years has many flaws. Many who have attempted to apply for their health care through the official site have come across the dreaded internet message: "Unable to connect to server", thus halting their progress in the application process. Aside from the applicants not being able to log into the website, some insurers have been making complaints that applications received have had missing names or numbers. Others also contained duplicates, with the same person signing up for different plans. One applicant claimed that the health care website kept stalling, so he clicked the submit button several times, causing the duplicate applications. This is a problem that has not been identified as an isolated incident.

         Many other applicant are complaining about the cost of the health care. In one instance, a North Carolina woman was upset to find that her current $267 a month plan is being cancelled and that the cheapest option on the exchange will cost her family $750 per month. Situations such as this are causing many to question why this new law is called the "Affordable" Care Act. Similar to this complaint is that several employer-sponsored insurance premiums are going up for 2014. The higher premiums are due in part to the need for the employers to change their insurance plans because of the new law. For example: UPS is ending coverage for spouses with access to policies elsewhere, and Home Depot is shifting their part-time workers to the exchanges.

         Among those who oppose the new law, there are complaints that Congress is violating the commerce clause of the Constitution, which grants Congress the power 'to regulate commerce... among the several states.' They state, that "while Congress has used its taxing power to fund Social Security and Medicare, never before has it used its commerce power to mandate that an individual person engage in an economic transaction with a private company."

         Most of all is the concern for the shortage of health care physicians. There is already a shortage of physicians, and other health care workers, in America, and as the numbers rise of people who obtain health insurance the need for more health care workers will also rise. This will leave the American people being forced to pay for high cost health care, even though they will not have a primary health care physician to go with their newly obtained, high cost insurance. The demand is already greater than the supply, and soon the demand will rise even greater than it is at this time.

         As can be seen by the few examples above, the Affordable Care Act has many issues that need to be worked out before it will ever become beneficial to the American people. I can only hope that it doesn't take another 2  years before the American government irons out these wrinkles, that maybe someday soon we will be able to see the good in this law that our President, Barack Obama, claims to have intended for us.