A New Plan to Make Health Care Even More Accessible?

A new piece of legislation called The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA) is being touted as bringing even more people access to health insurance and health care by 2019, according to an article entitled “Hijacked: Stolen Health Reform III: How Much Will Access to Care Be Expanded?” in The Huffington Post. This legislation, by 2019, purports to extend health insurance to thirty-two million more Americans, allow parents to keep kids on their health plan until they’re 26, extend Medicaid to sixteen million more people and so on. This sounds all well and good, but according to the article, there are more negatives than positives.

These include the fact that the bill still doesn’t grant coverage to millions of Americans. The markets and high-risk pools proposed will become even more expensive, and this legislation could also likely result in higher employer-based insurance coverage as well. The bill will also cut funding to hospitals as well, according to the article, making health care less accessible for those without insurance or with low-income insurance plans like Medicaid. The bill also doesn’t do much to address the physician shortage that also might further limit access to health care.

Now since this is The Huffington Post, this article might have a polotical bent, but I think most of these concerns are valid enough to at least consider. While trying to get universal health care in this country is something of a pipe dream at this point, trying to move toward it has to be a good thing, right? I for one at least hope so.