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Obama Care Explained in Plain English

  Sanjiv Gupta CPA  Published 
Obama Care Explained in Plain English

The US President, Barack Obama and Congress signed an agreement in the year 2010 to bring Obamacare into practice. This is a health insurance scheme initiated by the President so that all the US citizens are covered. The medical costs are on an uptrend in recent years and average medical expenses run into thousands of dollars. In a bid to reduce these costs and make the citizens feel covered in case of medical emergencies, the Obamacare plan was launched.

Once a family is covered with the general health insurance, then it need not worry about the shooting medical expenses in case of hospital visits, as a majority of the expenses are covered under this scheme. The patient only needs to pay a very nominal amount during the first visit to the hospital. This is called a co-payment. Most of the employees provide this scheme to their employees in return for a reasonable monthly premium payment.

However, Obamacare gives additional benefits to families who already have this scheme and it also provides coverage for people who are so poor that they cannot afford even the minimum premium payments. There are lots of daily wage workers in the US, whose employers do not offer any health insurance schemes to cover them. Obamacare is a panacea for all.

Changes that are reflected already

People who have health insurance get additional benefits from Obamacare in various ways. Parents can get additional coverage for their kids, till the kids turn 26 years of age. This plan does not drop patients midway or remove the coverage if somebody in the family falls ill suddenly. Insurance companies, under Obamacare policy, can never refuse to cover for families that have a chronically sick member. The co-payment option is taken off from this system and most of the general check and pregnancy tests can be done free of cost.

Insurance companies cannot act fraudulently and can raise premiums during the term of the policy, only if the increase rates are allowed by the state government. According to this policy, the insurance companies should use 80% of the premiums they receive, for settling claims of the insured people. However, if they fail to do it and instead spend on advertising expenses, they have to send a check to the insured for the excess amount used up. Families that do not have any insurance can use Obamacare to get temporary insurance cover till the year 2014.

Important changes in future

Obamacare will make health insurance compulsory in the year 2013. Failure to take insurance will attract a fine of 2.5% of the annual income to be paid to the government. Insurance schemes can be easily purchased online. Small business employers will have to mandatorily buy health insurance, failing which, they have to cough up a fine of $2000 per employee, except for the first set of 30 employees who joined the company.