Two of the most significant acts of federal healthcare legislation in the last years, if not in American history, are undoubtedly the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act. The stated goals of the former act were, in short, to make healthcare more affordable and also making healthcare coverage mandatory for almost all Americans. (Pear, 2012) The second act follows from the first, in that it functioned as an amendment to the PPACA, making perceived improvements. Accordingly, the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act added tax credits so as to purchase insurance, drops the penalty for not purchasing health care and taxing amendments based on income, whereby those with high incomes would pay more into the plan, while those with lower would pay less. (Klein, 2010)
The first act was necessary in that the U.S. needed a comprehensive revision of its healthcare system. As one of the only Western countries without such a federal plan, the U.S. was clearly primitive in terms of its healthcare legislation. The act, in other words, represented the commitment of the government to the health of its citizens, while also providing a needed corrective to a system that was not working, in so far as high percentages of Americans were without healthcare.
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Nevertheless, the act did have weaknesses, such as a taxing system that funds the healthcare program which needed to be improved, taxing more from the rich and less from the poor. The act endeavored to improve this situation by accomplishing precisely these goals. However, from another perspective, it can be debated that further improvements need to be made, such as even less taxing on low income households so as to further underscore the social nature of this program.
Certainly, the healthcare legislation was met with controversy, viewed by many as unnecessary government intervention. However, this type of argument can be applied to any government function to the point of absurdity or rather to the point where one can question why a government exists at all. If a government exists, one of its basic principles should be the commitment to the health of its citizens.
