Wait … you thought the health care debate was over? Not quite. The Pit will soon be overtaken again by excited students waving petitions and campaign signs. That’s right — President Barack Obama confirmed Monday morning that he will be seeking re-election for 2012.
And you can bet that an important part of his campaign will be championing the Affordable Care Act he signed in March last year, and which is now under attack.
In a speech in late February of this year, Obama praised the act, quoting the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office as saying that the act has already saved a trillion dollars in health care costs.
Although some parts of the act have already been put into action, it has been met with controversy, most recently this past January when a Florida court ruled it unconstitutional. There will be an appeal on the court’s ruling this June.
If allowed to continue, implementing the act would cost a net $788 billion over 10 years, but would reduce the budget deficit by $143 billion by 2019 by tackling insurance waste, fraud and abuse.
The plan would provide insurance coverage to 32 million uninsured Americans by providing subsidies for low-income individuals and families, expanding Medicare and Medicaid and preventing insurance companies from refusing to cover preexisting conditions or from dropping people who become sick.
Of special interest to college students is that under the plan, young adults would be able to stay on their parents’ health insurance plans until they are 26. As of now, many insurance companies drop dependents when they turn 19 or finish college.
To appease opponents of the act, Obama has signaled recently that he is willing to be flexible with the plan — if states can come up with a better plan than his by 2017, they will be allowed to implement that plan instead.
While this plan is certainly not perfect, it is better than the system we have now — a record 50 million American adults 18 to 64 years old were uninsured in 2010, according to a Centers for Disease Control report.
