Political campaigns and attempts made to overturn and replace the Affordable Car

Political campaigns and attempts made to overturn and replace the Affordable Care Act also known as Obamacare is the start of how legislators show their support or lack thereof regarding healthcare laws and programs such as, the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid (Manchikanti & Hirsch, 2016). This is an example of how health care policies go beyond healthcare initiatives and become political in nature, while affecting healthcare and the future of many voters. Cost-benefit analysis has possessed a significant impact on the election and reelection of legislators and presidential candidates. Simply put, repealing the ACA will not only be associated with a large economic cost, but it would also be affiliated with the loss of health insurance and a decline in the quality of health for many low and middle income American citizens. Additionally, legislators who are voted in office by the public may in turn, not be reelected by those same individuals and lose their seat in office. Political discussions related to healthcare have been used by politicians for years to gain votes, fund campaigns and attract supporters. Because of the overlap of affiliation between healthcare and politics, lawmakers utilize these topic and strategies throughout their campaign and make vows to create change or abolish current laws. Understand that healthcare disparity has been a significant challenge to the U.S. healthcare system for decades. This trend has been associated with high U.S. healthcare costs (Crowley et al., 2020). Low health insurance coverage among low-income Americans also limits access to medical care (Crowley et al., 2020). Therefore, President Obama’s administration introduced the Affordable Care Act (ACA) primarily to expand medical insurance coverage to individuals with low-income and socially disadvantaged populations (Oberlander, 2020). The ACA accomplished many of its goals including increasing accessibility to healthcare, affordability, and quality of healthcare for low and middle income individuals and families (Manchikanti & Hirsch, 2016). The Affordable Care Act made an immense attempt to address the issue of inequality in the US healthcare system for the first time. However many Republican senators viewed this legislation as costly and the policy was deemed to have political overtones from the beginning of its establishment. For example, when the Trump administration took office, repealing and overturning the Affordable Care Act was one of their top priorities. Consequently, many low income populations would lose access to high-quality medical care, reducing adverse health outcomes within the low income or uninsured population. As a voter, the thought of losing healthcare because of the inability to afford it can have a significant impact on your health and political view. Republicans expected to repeal and replace the ACA through the Republican Bill while President Trump was in office. According to the proposed bill, Americans without health insurance would no longer be subject to tax fines (Nadash et al., 2020). The Republican Bill would also roll back federal insurance requirements. As a result, the law would jeopardize Americans with social disadvantages’ access to high-quality medical care. The majority of American voters, however, backed the ACA because it improved access to high-quality healthcare. As a result, Americans would not vote for lawmakers who supported the repeal of the ACA. Since the Republican Bill was going to eliminate tax penalties for Americans without health insurance, the public feared that it would compromise access to medical treatment. According to studies, a legislator’s position on healthcare views or any other topic the public deems important, such as a specific national policy, affects their likelihood of getting re-elected to office (Sheffer et al, 2018). Legislative leaders understand that by supporting the ACA repeal, they would lose the support of the public majority. As a result, the majority of Republicans withdrew their support for the ACA repeal, which led to the Republican bill’s failure on a number of fronts. As a result, the voters were impressed with the lawmakers’ choice, which in turn would raise the likelihood of certain lawmakers being re-elected. References Crowley, R., Daniel, H., Cooney, T. G., Engel, L. S., & Health and Public Policy Committee of the American College of Physicians*. (2020). Envisioning a better U.S. health care system for all: coverage and cost of care. Annals of internal medicine, 172(2_Supplement), S7-S32. Manchikanti, L., & Hirsch, J. A. (2016). Repeal and Replace of Affordable Care: A Complex, but Not an Impossible Task. Pain Physician, 19(8), E1109-E1113. https://www.proquest.com/scholarly-journals/repeal-replace-affordable-care-complex-not/docview/2656012595/se-2 Nadash, P., Miller, E. A., Jones, D. K., Gusmano, M. K., & Rosenbaum, S. (2020). A series of unfortunate events: Implications of Republican efforts to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act for older adults. In Aging Policy and Politics in the Trump Era (pp. 67-89). Routledge. Oberlander, J. (2020). The Ten Years’ War: Politics, Partisanship, and the ACA: An exploration of why the Affordable Care Act has been so divisive despite the law’s considerable accomplishments. Health Affairs, 39(3), 471-478. Sheffer, L., Loewen, P. J., Soroka, S., Walgrave, S., & Sheafer, T. (2018). Nonrepresentative Representatives: An experimental study of the decision-making of elected politicians. American Political Science Review, 112(2), 302–321