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Whitney Hall
POLS 1100
Chandler
11/23/15

The Affordable Care Act

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was brought into the American system to ensure that all
American citizens have health care coverage and at the same time lowering the costs. In this
paper there are two sides to the argument establishing positive and negative sides to the ACA.
Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius debates the current problems that
the american health care system has and how this new act will help improve the system for all
American citizens. The second point of view is from Jason Fodeman. He is a doctor and he
debates that the ACA will have negative impacts on not only medical professionals but more
importantly the patients receiving the care with this new system.
Kathleen Sebelius argument is an address to the national conference of the state
legislatures health summit. She brings up four main positive points to justify her point. Her first
one is that no one will be denied having insurance based on pre-existing conditions. Her second
positive point is that everyone under the age of twenty-six can still be covered under their parents
health insurance, she says this will help them live out their hopes and dreams. Her third point
is that now preventive care will be covered. This is for pre-cancer and cholesterol screenings,
there will be no co-pay with this coverage. Her fourth point that that over-all people will save on
prescriptions.
After these main positive points she goes on to explain that parts of the law are still to
come. This part of the law will help cover those people who have problems with the the ACA.
The first point she makes for those who are against the policy is a new online heath insurance
market. This will open the health insurance marketplace to individuals and small business
owners, it mainly give them other options. The second is that this will give families a new way to
find insurance coverage that better fits their budgets. The third is that this market place will give
people a chance to set up doctor appointments, benefits, prescriptions, drugs, and mental health
services. She assumes that this new market will also have lower costs, she claims that New York
will cut their prices by 50%. Overall it will be more affordable that the previous market for
insurance. They will also put a huge focus on medicaid by making the policy more flexible and
they will offer a lot of support to educate people about it.

Whitney Hall
POLS 1100
Chandler

11/23/15
Jason Fodeman a doctor gives his argument against the ACA by also giving serval
negative points that this new policy will bring. The six main points he makes in his argument
against the policy are as follows. The first one is that there is less time set aside with patients. He
backs up this claim by explaining how Medicares declining reimbursements will result is less
physicians. This is because medicares has a lot of unfunded liabilities and this in turn will
increase health care costs and not decrease them.
The second point he makes is the there is underpayments all around. The government
funded payments to health care professionals are only 56% compared with the 71% and 81%
they would make with a privately funded insurance company. This means in the long run
hospitals actually loose money from helping people who are covered by medicare and medicaid.
Another major problem with this is that because they are underpaid there are less physicians that
are covered under their insurance and out of coverage payments are so low that it requires
physicians to see more and more patients to compensate for the lack of payment. This then leads
to shorter visits with the patients.
The third point is that this causes harm to the doctor-patient relationship. He claims that
the ACA does not protect doctor-patient relationship. This new policy forces doctors to spend
more time doing paper work versus spending time with the patient. Basically it compels doctors
to see more patients in less time. This also means in this shorter time frame physicians will have
less times to educate, counsel, answer questions, and offer explanations..
The fourth point he makes is that this will exacerbate the physician shortage. He claims
that by 2020 we will not have enough doctors because there isnt enough people studying in
medical school and there are significantly more patients. The AAMC (American Medical
Colleges) predicted that the shortage by 2025 will be 124,000 full time doctors. This does this by
two main ways one is that it increases those insured but not those covering the insurance. The
other is that older doctors will retire early.
The fifth point is that it deters young people from pursuing medicine. This will likely
play into the fourth point as will because this is one of the causes of the shortage in health care.
On average those who are in their mid-30s will have on average $150,000 in education related

Whitney Hall
POLS 1100
Chandler

11/23/15
dept. Residency is mentally and physically challenging. They will receive minimum wage while
working these rigorous hours, only getting about four days off a month on average.
I found that the second argument by Jason Fodeman was more persuasive. Although both
of these arguments had strong biass Jason backed up all of his points with facts. Kathleen gave
some good points and some facts but not facts with every point she was making and this in turn
made for a weak argument. She also spent a lot of time comparing this act to things like early
child education programs which has nothing to do with the ACA. I can see her point of view but
it was unnecessary. Jasons facts were necessary and he had specific facts to go with each of his
main points. I think that Jason grabs the reader by offering a direct point and then throws in his
opinion and states why he has this opinion by a fact. This has an emotional appeal as well
because it puts the argument in a way that will affect all of us, as a reader I can emotional see
how it affects me. I do think that Jason didnt do the best job at adding to opposing arguments I
do think that Kathleen did a better job of that. However overall I think that Jasons argument was
more persuasive.
I agree with this act having negative consequences. This has affect my daily life because I
have a lot of health problems and Im happy that everyone has access to health care but this act
has made it very difficult to work with an insurance company. I have endometriosis and many of
the doctors who are specialized in this care are not covered in my insurance. I also have to wait
sometimes up to six months to be seen by some of my doctors. I appreciate that it has lowered
the cost of my prescriptions but I still have a lot of problems with communication between the
doctors and the insurance companies. I truly do feel like there just isnt enough time for me.
I wanted to pursue nursing but after working in the field for a while as a CNA I saw how
hard the health care field was. It wasnt the patient care it was dealing with insurance and how
the whole health care setting runs now. It isnt patient centered, its becoming more business
centered.
I think that Jasons argument falls right into my experience of the ACA. His points are
solid and many of them have come to pass in the new health care system. I have not seen the
promises that Kathleen pointed out like; lowering the cost of insurance. Because many of my
medical problems are not covered under my insurance we have to pay out of pocket and

Whitney Hall
POLS 1100
Chandler

11/23/15
insurance coverage. I was also promised that my health issues will have no impact on what kind
of insurance coverage I can get and that is the exact opposite of my situation. I therefore agree
with Jason on his argument that ACA has more negative consequences than positive.