Discussion On Whether The Affordable Care Act Is Unconstitutional Or Constitutional
This essay is about whether the Affordable Care Act (ACA); the federal statute enacted by the 111th United States Congress and signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010, should be stated as unconstitutional or constitutional. With Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 amendment, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) represents the U. S. healthcare systems most significant regulatory overhaul and expansion of coverage in the 20th/ 21st century since the passage of Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. Even though my personal opinion isn’t, for that essay, as important as the question, whether it is constitutional or not, I would yet like to talk 3 or 4 sentences about the U. S. Health Care situation.
For me, as a German, It’s something completely new when I would have to think about paying for medicine with my own money. Without the Affordable Health Care, which makes it illegal for American to not having an insurance, some people, who decided to not paying for an insurance, would have to think about it. So if one citizen one day gets serious injured, thru what reason so ever, he had to pay a lot of money for medicine, which potentially would “destroy” his life. And if this person wouldn’t be insured, this person would most likely go bankrupt. With that being said, it’s completely nonsense that some people still mean, that the Affordable Health Care, AKA Obama Care should be declared as unconstitutional from a humanitarian point of view. But though, this essay is about the Court view, it’s a whole different story, which was then again declared unconstitutional in 2018 by a judge in Texas.
The ACA's major provisions came into force in 2014. By 2016 so two years after major enforcement, the uninsured share of the population had roughly halved, “with estimates ranging from 20 to 24 million additional people covered during 2016. ” Even tough one year before, there were many complaints about the Supreme Court ruling on Affordable Health Care. “The Problem with Obamacare is still the same: The law is broken. ” (John A. Boehner). In 2010 the U. S Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the Affordable Care Act is constitutional. The health insurance mandate was found to be “permissible under Congress’s taxing authority. ” The 2016 Ruling by the Supreme Court on Affordable Health Care was controversial, and in 2018, after a federal judge from Texas ruled it unconstitutional the Affordable Health Care Act “faces a new legal challenge. ”
With that being said it’s even more controversial if it should be constitutional or not, but one shouldn’t forget that the U. S Supreme Court declared it first as constitutional in 2010, and so I think the U. S Supreme Court should reconsider on declaring the Act once again constitutional. Also the giant health care reform debate raises many complex issues including those of cost, quality of health care, coverage, accessibility, and accountability. Underlying these policy considerations are issues regarding the status of health care as a constitutional or legal right.
Even though the U. S. Constitution does not explicitly set forth a right to health care, the Supreme Court's decisions in the areas of the right to privacy suggest the Constitution implicitly provides an individual the right to access health care services at one's own expense from willing medical providers. However, issues regarding access concern access where a person has the means and ability to pay for health care, but rather involve situations where a person cannot afford to pay for health care. The question becomes, not whether one has a right to health care that one can pay for, but whether the government or some other entity has the obligation to provide such care to those who cannot afford it. But even if the United States Constitution doesn’t explicitly address a right to health Care, Obama Care becoming a law definitely wasn’t a bad decision, and it isn’t unconstitutional. One has to admit that when the Constitution was framed no one really thought about health care, or at least not about a health care system funded by the Government. In today’s world it’s very important to have a health insurance which doesn’t costs a ton of money, which can save your live in an emergency.
Despite the lack of discussion of health care rights in the Constitution, arguments have been made that the denial by the federal government of a minimal level of health care to poor persons violates the equal protection guarantees under the Constitution. Even tough the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment applies only to the states, similar equal protection principles are also accurate to the federal government through the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment; “A litigant challenging a federal action has the burden of proving that the governmental actions places an undue burden on the exercises of an individual’s fundamental right. ”
Even though the interpretations of the Constitution and Supreme Court do not identify rights health care at the government’s expense Congress came up with several statues, which establish and define that people receive medical aid from the government. Congress also has provided funding to pay for the health care services offered under the Law. Congress enacted these statutes to 'make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper' to carry out its mandate “to provide for the general Welfare. ”
Congress enacted a health care reform legislation. It’s called the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, P. L. 111-148”. This also imposes new requirements on individuals employers, and the private health insurance market. It also expands the Medicaid program among other provisions. With that being said, I think it’s more than just comprehensible, that, in the future, the ACA should still be declared as constitutional.
In my opinion it’s obvious that the Affordable Care Act continually be considered constitutional. The United States Supreme Court declared this back in the year 2010; even if last year a judge in Texas declared it as unconstitutional because of some tax changes, one could overall say that it still be considered as constitutional, as in addition Congress came up with the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, P. L. 111-148”. The ACA helps saving lives (at least not destroying them thru high medication cost) shouldn’t just be declared as unconstitutional, when additionally the Supreme Court declared it as the complete opposite. As I said before in my essay, the situation was a whole different back in the days, when the framers had to think about not transforming back in a Monarchy, whether then creating a national health care system funded by a young government.
