INSTRUCTIONS ATTACHED
ASSIGNMENT
Analyzing Policy
Requirements
Continuing with the public policy you selected in the Week 3 assignment, Historical Perspective, you will now describe and expand upon the influence, motives, and impacts of your chosen policy and its parameters. Write a 4–5 page paper in which you:
· Write a one-page summary of the policy, including the purpose, the context of the problem, and any recommendations or suggestions from the policy to address the problem. (Use your summary skills to keep this to one page.)
· Identify all the stakeholders, official and unofficial, along with any interest groups involved with your policy.
· Describe the role and function of each of the stakeholders you identified.
· Of the list of stakeholders you identified, pick two and describe the political influence of each stakeholder, explaining motives, conflicts, interrelationships, and impacts on the policy.
· Include at least four peer-reviewed references (no more than five years old) from material outside the textbook. Note: Appropriate peer-reviewed references include scholarly articles and governmental websites. Wikipedia, other wikis, and any other websites ending in anything other than “.gov” do not qualify as peer-reviewed. Use
Basic Search: Strayer University Online Library
to identify references.
2
Historical Perspectives
Historical Perspective
WEEK 3 ASSIGNMENT
Historical Perspective
Discuss The Historical Perspective of The Time When the Policy Was Discussed or Implemented. Indicate The Context or The Problem of The Day and The Urgency for The Policy.
I choose to compare President Clinton’s and President Obama’s healthcare policies for my homework. Clinton was the first president to prioritize expenses throughout his term, and his successors did the same. Because healthcare has been a source of conflict for a long time, it was necessary to address the problem of inflation. The main goal was to obtain universal coverage, which he accomplished by requiring that everyone buy insurance via the government. Furthermore, corporations were obligated to make the dame available to their workers (Zhang, 2021). Even though the program would assist many people, certain individuals would be required to pay more than others, generating disagreement about the policy’s effectiveness. “You may be eligible for a subsidy if your company employs less than 50 individuals. You may be required to pay an extra cost if a business offers minimal coverage. If you are a young single person in your twenties already covered, your insurance rates may rise somewhat. This is because you will be joining a significant gathering of middle-aged and older people.” The president made this remark.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, signed into law by President Barack Obama, accelerated the implementation of these regulations. There are significant parallels between the policies of the two presidents in the United States. However, there are some distinctions between the two. Hillarycare forced companies to enroll their workers in the exchanges from the outset, even though large firms may opt-out of the agreements (Mechkova & Carlitz, 2019). During the program’s first year of operation, Obamacare allowed for the cohabitation of the individual insurance market and state-based exchanges. The goal was to guarantee that as many people as possible were covered. Individual market health plans were expected to be swiftly transferred to exchanges, which is exactly what is happening today, at least in part. Both Hillarycare and Obamacare gave their boards of directors to supervise clinical procedures.
Analyze The Social, Economic, And Political Environments for The Times the Policy Was Discussed or Implemented
President Obama may have opted to make a significant sacrifice for the nation’s sake on purpose. Despite his “imperfect” healthcare reform, he included subsidized universal national health insurance for all legal residents of the United States earning less than 138 percent of the poverty threshold. His plan to reduce income inequality by raising the Medicare payroll tax by 0.9 percent on individuals earning more than $200,000 and couples earning more than $250,000, as well as imposing a new 3.8 percent tax on unearned income to help pay for the Affordable Care Act (ACA), only resulted in a marginal improvement. Consequently, he raised the marginal tax rate on the top 1% to what it was during Ronald Reagan’s administration.
Furthermore, keep in mind that its social and economic characteristics were not at their peak. Because of the crisis, many individuals had lost their employment, and the project was intended to provide some assistance to the general public. The strategy was designed for those with limited financial resources. Small firms would gain from this arrangement (Fervers, 2018). Since the key coverage provisions of the Affordable Care Act went into effect in January 2014, our country’s uninsured rate has dropped to its lowest level in history. This is unique in the decade since Medicare and Medicaid were established, and our country’s uninsured rate has dropped to its lowest level in history. According to the most recent study from the Department of Health and Human Services, an estimated 16.4 million people got coverage in the first few months of 2015. This figure includes both persons who obtained coverage after the end of 2013 and young adults who obtained coverage before 2014 due to the law’s provision allowing them to remain on their parent’s health insurance plan until 26.
Critique The Policy for Its Effectiveness of The Time
According to facts, the Affordable Care Act’s introduction in 2010 changed the nature of the federal government’s relationship with the citizens of the United States. Using a broad interpretation of the Commerce Clause, the government was able to pass legislation that radically transformed how Americans get healthcare and the federal government’s role in that relationship. That link has been re-established in three major locations. First, by giving the federal government greater influence over the states, the Affordable Care Act shifted the balance of federalism considerably. While states have the freedom to choose how to execute the Affordable Care Act, they must do so. Following that, civil rights were violated when the Affordable Care Act (ACA) mandated some demographics to pay higher healthcare premiums, even though such rates were not actuarially justifiable. Finally, by mandating all insurers to cover birth contraception as a mandatory benefit, the Affordable Care Act infringed on American civil freedoms, particularly those linked to religion and the First Amendment (Rule, 2019).
There is no doubt that the healthcare system in the United States is in disarray. Compared to other industrialized nations, Americans pay some of the highest healthcare costs while receiving about the same quality of treatment. On the other hand, the Affordable Care Act is not the solution. To begin with, it does not affect lowering prices; all it does is mandate more healthcare coverage for the uninsured, which does not affect lowering costs. Second, it has the intellectual ability to profoundly change the relationship between the people and the federal government in ways that would be very destructive to society. The Commerce Clause and the federal government’s power, in general, are no longer bound by the Constitution if the federal government has the authority to tax a person for failing to obtain a commodity that it thinks it needs. Because legal challenges to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) continue, it might be years before the legislation’s real status is confirmed.
References
Fervers, L. (2018). Economic miracle, political disaster? Political consequences of Hartz IV. Journal of European Social Policy, 29(3), 411–427.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0958928718774259
Mechkova, V., & Carlitz, R. (2019). Gendered Accountability: When and Why Do Women’s Policy Priorities Get Implemented? SSRN Electronic Journal.
https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3384559
Rule, J. B. (2019). Contextual Integrity and its Discontents: A Critique of Helen Nissenbaum’s Normative Arguments. Policy & Internet, 11(3), 260–279.
https://doi.org/10.1002/poi3.215
Zhang, Z. (2021). Space Science in China: A Historical Perspective on Chinese Policy 1957–2020 and Policy Implication. Space Policy, 58, 101449.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.spacepol.2021.101449
