Why the ACA Did Nothing for the Working Family

One of the biggest controversies over the Affordable Care Act, most often referred to as Obamacare, is that it really has done nothing for the average blue collar working family. Those on the higher end of the socioeconomic spectrum of society really didn’t need affordable care and those on the lower rungs were already getting free help from the government.

This leaves only the middle class, the workers of the country who could have been served by affordable health insurance but this campaign promise made by President Obama in his bid for the Oval Office never came to pass. Obamacare has done nothing for the working family. Here is why it is possible to say that.

Who Wrote Those Laws Anyway?

The first thing to consider when questioning why Obamacare isn’t working for middle income consumers is to take a look at how the law came to be in the first place. It is said that President Obama and key members of his staff met with large insurers to draft what would become the Affordable Care Act, ACA. The premise of the ACA was that every person has a right to affordable care but in reality, it seemed as though only the insurance companies would benefit because they were the ones actually getting paid.

Many opponents to Obamacare stated that this was their concern. However, even this concern turned out to be unfounded. To this day students studying healthcare law at online schools or on campus are still debating how and why insurance companies were there to draft the laws and not representatives from some of the major teaching universities. The inside ‘joke’ is now those very same insurers who sought to reap the benefits are some of the biggest losers.

The High Costs Just Keep Getting Higher

While the plan sets limits on services and procedures, the costs just keep getting higher and higher. As a result, providers (yes those same ones that helped draft the law!) began pulling out. They could not afford to continue making such high payments and now there are only a select few insurers still in the game. But this, too, has a trickledown effect because hospitals are also not getting paid.

Hospitals Still Losing Money

If you are a student studying healthcare law and policy, you just might want to look at how hospitals are losing huge sums because of the ‘Affordable’ Care Act. Consider the fact that the only people who are actually paying for this insurance are the middle earners. These people cannot meet the high premiums that keep getting higher and the high deductibles that also continue getting higher. As a result, hospitals are not getting paid because those middle earners cannot afford $5,000 or $6,000 in deductibles. They still get the procedure or the treatment, but the exorbitant deductible simply sits there unpaid.

So who is the loser? Everyone! The working family isn’t able to pay those high costs that eventually go against their credit making life so much worse for them. Hospitals aren’t getting paid and insurers can’t keep paying when costs keep rising. In the end, almost everyone is a loser but mostly those middle earners who have limited income as it is. It will be interesting to see just how quickly Obamacare can be repealed and replaced with something that actually works for middle earners, the working families of the nation.

Amy & Aron's