By: Kaleah Syvirathphan
This is the initial installment in a series of stories that explain how certain political issues and decisions affect us as students. Photo Credits: ABC News
A few days ago a Texas Judge ruled the Affordable Care Act (ACA) “unconstitutional.” The provision, known as the mandate, requires people to choose an insurance plan; either through an employer or direct from the ACA, where the algorithm determines the amount of subsidies they would qualify for, dependent on need. If you do not opt in you will be fined a penalty at the end of the year. With a Republican majority in Congress, the repeal of the mandate was narrowly approved late 2017. Attorneys used that for their argument to repeal the law in its entirety; saying since the mandate is integral for the law to work effectively the whole law should be scrapped.
There are some people who don’t want to buy the insurance. They’re never sick and won’t ever need it but paying for that Healthcare is beneficial, rather than paying a sum for nothing.
We need healthy people to bring down the increasing price for insurance. If a person with asthma has to pay for an inhaler or other medicines then the price would be cheaper if a healthy person could pay the monthly fee for that insurance. The price for those two people would be cheaper because their fees would offset each other, rather than one person having to pay it all.
Obama’s attempt to fix bridge the gap between privately funded access and publically funded access was the ACA.
For example, people in poverty or below have to travel maybe an hour away or more just to find a doctor who accepts Medicare, the Medicare patients are subjected to longer wait times and provider networks are farther away creating a larger imposition compared to those who have privately funded healthcare.
This affects us as students because the longer we wait the less time we have, they’ll be sick longer and you’d have to be the one driving them to the doctors office hours away, you have to get that over-the-counter medication, and you have to pay that fee for those visits. Your parents are paying for your grandparents healthcare bills and that means that us as students don’t get that dress we want for the dance, that new iPhone, or a laptop for your schoolwork.
In five to ten years this is the problem we’ll be dealing with ourselves. This all has a ripple effect. Everybody deserves a chance to survive. Everybody has a chance of getting the flu or cancer and they should be able to get the care they need despite how much money they make.