2. In 2010, President Barack Obama and Congress enacted a healthcare reform bill

Question

2. In 2010, President Barack Obama and Congress enacted a healthcare reform bill in the USA. Two goals of the bill were to provide more Americans with health insurance (via subsidies for lower income households) and to reduce the cost of healthcare (via various reforms in how healthcare is provided). a. How do these goals relate to equality and efficiency? b. How might healthcare reform increase productivity in the United States? c. How might healthcare reform decrease productivity in the United States?

Explanation / Answer

Health Care reform Increase The Productivity:

ThePatient Protection and Affordable Care Actsigned into law in 2010 by President Barack Obama was intended to help lower healthcare costs, expand access to insurance, and improve health services to patients. But the law remains controversial, and some Republicans are attempting to repeal it.

One debate concerning the healthcare overhaul is whether it helps or hurts U.S. business competiveness. Neeraj Sood at the University of Southern California says the law could increase the number of U.S. jobs by 250,000 to 400,000 per year and significantly reduce health spending for businesses. Harvard's Jennifer Baron argues healthcare reform should not only be framed as a means of cost-cutting, but also as a way to improve worker productivity by improving individuals' health. But Bob Graboyes of the National Federation of Independent Business, an opponent of the law, says it is "laden with disincentives for businesses to grow, to innovate, and to hire" and should be repealed. The American Enterprise Institute's Thomas Miller says the law should be "repealed and replaced" not to boost business competitiveness but to improve the value of healthcare. Their future competitiveness will depend critically on whether the new law will curb growth in healthcare spending. However, if it was easy, we would have reduced healthcare spending growth decades ago. Therefore, not surprisingly, some believe reform will only expand insurance coverage through subsidies to low-income Americans and expanded eligibility rules for public insurance programs. According to this view, premiums for employer-sponsored coverage will remain unchanged, and thus the competitiveness of U.S. businesses will be largely unaffected by reform.

EQUITY and EFFICIANCY:

From a strictly economic perspective, there is no right answer to this question. Arthur Okun said long ago that the big tradeoff in economic policy is between equality and efficiency. The pending healthcare reform bill moves us along that tradeoff. Let

Related Questions

Navigate

• Browse (All)
• Browse 2
• Subjects

---

---

Integrity-first tutoring: explanations and feedback only — we do not complete graded work. Learn more.