On October 27th, 2016, I attended the lecture "Healthcare Reform and the 2016 Elections: What Happens to Obamacare After Obama?" delivered by Dr. Jonathan Oberlander from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (UNC-CH). Dr. Oberlander was brought to FSU through the combined efforts of the College of Social Sciences and Public Policy and the Pepper Institute to share his expertise in the topic. He is a professor of Health Policy & Management and is the chair of Social Medicine and his talk certainly increased my understanding of the current healthcare climate that engulfs our country. To start, Dr. Oberlander gave a brief overview of the 20,000-page bill that is the Affordable Care Act. He discussed how Obamacare was simply an improvement to the existing American healthcare market rather than a complete overhaul of health insurance. His talk highlighted the biggest discrepancies and misconceptions that people
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This simply is not true, but is another factor that has contributed to the public disapproval of Obamacare. The truth of the matter is that anyone who had health insurance through personal means (employer, privately, etc.) is absolutely allowed to keep that and completely ignore the rollout of the Affordable Care Act – it would not affect them in the slightest. Dr. Oberlander went on to address some of the flaws of Obamacare, including the biggest one, which is known as the ‘employer mandate’. The employer mandate (implemented in 2015) requires that small businesses with more than 49 employees (but less than 100) has to start insuring their workers by 2016. This did not achieve the intended effect. Rather than insure workers, business owners chose to cut down to 49 employees and pay the existing employees marginally more, saving the money they otherwise would have to spend on an insurance
This simply is not true, but is another factor that has contributed to the public disapproval of Obamacare. The truth of the matter is that anyone who had health insurance through personal means (employer, privately, etc.) is absolutely allowed to keep that and completely ignore the rollout of the Affordable Care Act – it would not affect them in the slightest. Dr. Oberlander went on to address some of the flaws of Obamacare, including the biggest one, which is known as the ‘employer mandate’. The employer mandate (implemented in 2015) requires that small businesses with more than 49 employees (but less than 100) has to start insuring their workers by 2016. This did not achieve the intended effect. Rather than insure workers, business owners chose to cut down to 49 employees and pay the existing employees marginally more, saving the money they otherwise would have to spend on an insurance