Health Care Reform in the USA - Essay Example

"Health Care Reform in the USA" is a perfect example of a paper on the health system.
The American population has been intensely split over the health care law passed by President Obama (Mirmirani, 2010). However, the majority of the opinions are tilted more on the negative than on the positive. One of the components that have received disapproval from many Americans is the requirement to be covered by health insurance or be penalized $95 or 1% of taxable income. Survey studies conducted in the past one year show that almost 52% of the populace disapproves of the new healthcare reform law while 42% approve. The new healthcare aims at giving Americans access to affordable and quality health insurance (Mezel, 2008). The health insurance component aims at availing both public and private health insurance to the public through consumer protections, taxes, subsidies, and insurance exchanges (Mezel, 2008).  According to Mirmirani (2010), the health insurance component of the health care law will lower the cost of purchasing non-group health insurance for all the groups of people, especially the youth. It is anticipated that by 2016, almost all the youth will have accessed cheap health insurance and will save up to 13% on their premiums. This is because the government will have subsidized healthcare insurance (Mezel, 2008).

However, on the other hand, non-group insurance premiums will surge by 46% by 2016. According to findings by Mirmirani (2010), the purchase prices of insurance premiums on the individual market would on average increase by almost 30% by 2016. This would not be the case in the absence of the healthcare reform law. This report shows that states such as Minnesota would experience an increase of 29% while Colorado would be the least affected with an increase of 18% in the individual health insurance premiums. In essence, the new healthcare law compels the healthcare insurers to offer more benefits and spend more on health expenses as it bankrolls the use of better-off insurance packages. The laws of economics command that these expenses will be borne by the consumers. Many of the individuals who go uninsured are the youth. This is because the young people are in the transition to the workforce, and typically have meager earnings (Volpp, 2007). Additionally, the youth are healthy, and health insurance is less significant to them. However, the new healthcare law compels insurers to burden their eldest beneficiaries no more than three times what is borne by the youngest ones. Volpp (2007) notes that this policy is referred to as the community rating.

In essence, Mezel (2008) acknowledges that the older beneficiaries pay six times on healthcare than the younger people. This makes young people pay more for their health insurance. The impact of this community rating policy is the reallocation of healthcare insurance expenses from the elderly to the young (Mirmirani, 2010). The youth will face steep increases in their health insurance premiums and be deterred from purchasing health insurance covers (Mezel, 2008). However, since the people whose premiums exceed 8% of their taxable income will be exempted from this law, increases in premiums will exempt more youths from this mandate and create a recipe for a severe selection death spiral.