Government Intervention : The Affordable Care Act

Government interventions in the marketplace seem to be unavoidable, and with Democratic President Barack Obama in office the government appears to be more present than ever before. In recent years, government has involved itself in several marketplace problems. Some decisions made by administration were popular, others have torn the two major parties even further apart. On March 23, 2010, President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act, also know as Obamacare (“Key Features of the Affordable Care Act”). This law established health insurance reforms that would come out over the next four years, and possibly beyond that. Each continuing year of the president’s term, an alteration to the health insurance system would be set in an effort to drastically change the way health insurance was run. The purpose of the ACA is to make health care more affordable for those with little or no coverage. The ACA is intended for people who cannot buy insurance and for those who are underinsured, people whose health care doesn’t fully cover expensive medical expenses. Rather than creating a national health insurance plan, the ACA sets national standards on health insurance structure and prices. The law requires all individuals to have health insurance and companies larger than 50 employees to offer insurance to their full-time employees. It also demands for insurance plans in the small group markets to provide for 10 certain benefits, caps out-of-pocket costs and provides federal