The Cost of Blocking Imperfect Solutions: State-based Obstacles to Implementing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA, AKA Obamacare)

Sandhya Somashekhar’s recent article in The Washington Post, “States find new ways to resist health law”, provides a nice overview of some of the ways that states are throwing up obstacles to effective implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). With the Affordable Care Act set to be implemented, blocking its effective implementation raises serious moral issues. Though it is an imperfect solution, I believe that these state-based obstacles to its implementation are deeply morally problematic because the costs of non-compliance fall on individuals while the politicians who have put these obstacles in place face little or no personal or political cost, and indeed stand to gain.

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While I am arguing here that blocking implementation of the PPACA is deeply morally problematic, it is important to acknowledge that it is an imperfect solution to America’s glaring problem of uninsured persons and expensive, inefficient provision of health care.  The PPACA or ACA, known colloquially as “Obamacare”, will work to get more Americans into the health care market and provide more access to preventive care for high- and low-risk patients, alike.  Aside from the very valuable limitations on health insurers’ ability to refuse to provide coverage for high-risk patients and stop providing coverage for ill patients, it is still based on the for-profit health insurer model as evidenced in part by the early elimination of a government-based “public option” which would have competed with insurance industry plans.  In addition, a large number of Americans who get insurance through their employers, yet find the premiums taxing and fall into otherwise-subsidized income ranges, will not have access to the federal subsidy system which is designed to give financial support to those entering the market through the health insurance exchanges.

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“New Video Game Challenges Users To Navigate Texas’ Harsh Abortion Restrictions”

Read more about the An erection viagra no prescription canada is where the large chambers in your penis fill with blood which lead to rapid expansion. The Psoriasis-Ltd III “penetrates and migrates” so only a 0.5 second application or a … Continue reading

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Women, politics and feminism: we need to watch our backs

The times are tough, both for women in politics, and regarding political decisions affecting women. Three recent events are particularly noteworthy. The first was the overthrow last week of the first female Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard. While I was scouring news sites for comment and analysis on that sorry affair, I noticed the extraordinary effort of Texan senator Wendy Davis to filibister a Senate Bill that aimed to introduce regulations with the potential to close 37 of the 42 clinics that provide abortions in Texas and to ban abortion after 20 weeks gestation. Her courage and tenacity have proved to be a lightening rod, attracting swelling support in the aftermath of her marathon speech. The contrast could not be greater between this event and the actions of Ohio’s governor in signing into law major restrictions on women’s reproductive rights in that state a few days later. As Steve Benen reports, Governor Kasich was surrounded by middle-aged white men as at the stroke of a pen, he introduced wide-ranging and draconian measures that will make seeking abortion, for women including those pregnant following rape, a far more onerous, expensive and difficult event than it needs to be.

How are these events linked?

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Ginsburg on Abortion

The New York Times editorial page of April 3, 2013 cautions against putting too much stock in comments by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg “critical of the court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide. It is not the judgment that was wrong, but “it moved too far, too fast,” she said at Columbia Law School last year, a view she has expressed in various speeches and law review articles.” Ginsburg’s comments are being used by those opposed to marriage equality to caution against a Court ruling that would affirm marriage equality as constitutional right.

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