One of the Key Provisions of the Patient Protection and the Affordable Care Act of 2010 from the Kaiser Family Foundation states:
“All individuals will be required to have health insurance, with some exceptions, beginning in 2014. Those who do not have coverage will be required to pay a yearly financial penalty of the greater of $695 per person (up to a maximum of $2,085 per family), or 2.5% of household income, which will be phased-in from 2014-2016” (The Henry Keiser Family Foundation: 2012).
Starting from 2013, there will be an increase of the taxes for Medicare and the introduction of 2.9 % tax on the sale of medical equipment. Starting from 2014, the existence of insurance will become an indispensable condition for the majority of people living in the USA. These requirements have caused the greatest resistance from the opponents of the health care reform, and at the moment its legality is challenged in the American courts.
The ideas of Obama met a hostile reception by the republican politicians, insurance companies and lobbyists. They declared that the new state forms of insurance lead to socialism. This is the most controversial point of the reform and Affordable Care Act of 2010.
This project also caused a sharp criticism from the elderly citizens, according to whom the positions of the young unemployed Americans will improve at their expense. The idea of the obligatory insurance at which each American will be obliged to buy insurance or will be threatened by penalty is a special target for the criticism of the Republicans.
The popularity of the Affordable Care Act of 2010 is still low even after a year passed after its acceptance by the congress and signing by Barak Obama. The American society still remains split on this issue, and considerably on the basis of the party affiliation. The polls, conducted by the Gallup Poll on March 18-19, 2011, showed that 79 % of the Democrats approved the health care reform, while 74 % of the Republicans, on the contrary, disapproved it.
Among the so-called “independent” 37 % of the respondents supported the health care reform and 51 % did not. As a whole, the number of the Americans supporting the law on health care exceeds the number of those who object to it: 46 % and 44 % respectively.
The opponents of the health care reform pursue a dual aim: to try to challenge the reform in courts understanding that the chances for the success are insignificant, and to discredit it in the opinions of the voters. The Republicans skillfully use the mistrust of the Americans to the state, exploiting the subject of “the intrusion of the central government to the rights and freedoms of the ordinary Americans” and warming up their discontent with health care reform, sometimes contrary to own interests. At the moment the Republicans count on the maximum gelding of the health care reform, achieving the revision of its provisions, first of all, the requirement for the obligatory …