Health Care Reform – Set Right the Basic Facts

by Vanessa Jones on March 8, 2013 at 1:14 PM

Affordable Care has received a lot of criticism with many misinterpreted facts, and when these wrong facts are repeated often they start sounding true. Clarity on some of these implications is very important.

Employers for decades have been adjusting employee work hours to avoid paying benefits like health care, paid time off and for yearly vacations. Obamacare cannot change this or force employers to pay workers more or reduce their working hours to avoid paying benefits.

What is Medicare / Medicaid?

Medicaid / Medicare are different governmental programs that provide medical and health-related services to specific groups of people in U.S. and managed by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The hourly wage employees are economically vulnerable and as they generally earn less and do not have any health care benefits. Affordable health care will ensure that these workers can now get health coverage from the new health exchanges, with premium tax credits so that health insurance is now affordable.

Currently, employers have been tweaking overtime rules by passing off employees as independent contractors. They avoid paying payroll taxes, and due to this there have been many penalties and high -profile settlements. Obamacare's aim is to provide healthcare to more individuals, and save at least 50,000 deaths - due to unavailable healthcare.

Overview on USA Healthcare Insurance

This section gives an introduction about the status of Healthcare Sector in USA - in the past and present and introduction of reforms for a secured future.

A city ordinance, Healthy San Francisco, required employers to pay health insurance to their workers or give them an hourly pay subsidy to buy their own coverage. The restaurant association wanted to stop Healthy San Francisco because 'benefits destroy jobs' unbelievable but true, in the restaurant industry which is actually booming.

According to OECD and World Health Organization studies, it has been found that health care costs are highest in the US and health outcomes below average. One of the reasons for this is that care is given too late - emergency room visits abound as people without health cover postpone seeing doctors till actually an emergency. When primary care doctors can be consulted at an earlier stage the disease or illness can be better treated. Obamacare is taking steps to reduce hospital re-admissions, health care associated infections and wastage. By expanding health coverage Obamacare aims to save millions with a healthy workforce, to increase productivity.

References: Hannah Punitha (IRDA Licence Number: 2710062)

Jeffrey Pfeffer and Steve Westly, March 2013

Source: Medindia

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