The Affordable Care Act (ACA)

While the U.S. healthcare system has undergone extensive changes since the Affordable Care Act (ACA) became law, in some respects the system remains consistent with pre ACA-models. U.S. healthcare is still divided into varying levels of insurance, all of which provide a unique set of benefits and all of which also illustrate associative strengths and weaknesses. Some of the compromises associated with the ACA`s passage in 2010 reflects this latter trend. While this law ultimately expanded Medicaid benefits to non-elderly adults, it also retained the employer-driven models of healthcare that have been a staple feature of U.S. healthcare law for decades. The purpose of this essay is to explore the various levels of healthcare that the Henry J.
Kaiser Family Foundation (2017) relied upon an analysis of census-driven data to understand the types of insurance coverage available and how each type corresponded to different sub-populations and socioeconomic groups. But while the organization`s analysis utilized economic-driven data for this analysis it also utilized a measurement known as “health insurance units”: factors which included economics but also calculated household eligibility by noting the size of the household in conjunction with employment and other identifiers (paragraph 1). Ultimately, the organization`s analysis revealed that the U.S. healthcare system is comprised of both private and public sources: those deriving from the government and those that are either privately purchased or acquired through an employer. Specifically, the Foundation (2017) identified five classifications of health insurance coverage: employer, private (non-group), Medicaid, Medicare, and Other Public. The Foundation also noted a sixth category—Uninsured—to identify the percentage of people who are still without insurance. The group organized this information by state and included in percentage form to make the data manageable and
Medicare, for example, works well for elderly patients who have other forms of coverage but often does not provide adequate coverage as a stand-alone source (“Redesigning Medicare Benefits,” 2013). Similarly, Medicaid provides coverage to those living under the poverty line and now includes a larger base of economically-eligible, non-elderly adults. However, it is less helpful in covering younger people below the age of 26 who are similarly disadvantaged. Amraadelo (2017) notes that while coverage for this group has not increased at a rate consistent with other populations since 2014. Because other forms of public insurance are often dependent upon Medicaid, these systems often feature the same types of advantages and disadvantages. They provide coverage to a larger population but cannot always accommodate the neediest. Immigrants, for example, represent a group that is often underserviced in terms of health