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Affordable Health Care Coverage

In: Other Topics

Submitted By joscelynhughes
Words 1300
Pages 6
Health care reform was a major topic of discussion during the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries. As the race narrowed, attention focused on the plans presented by the two leading candidates, New York Senator Hillary Clinton and the eventual nominee, Illinois Senator Barack Obama. Each candidate proposed a plan to cover the approximately 45 million Americans estimated to be without health insurance at some point during each year. The difference between the plans was that Clinton's plan was to require all Americans to obtain coverage (in effect, an individual health insurance mandate), while Obama's was to provide a subsidy but not create a direct requirement.
After the Presidents inauguration, the President announced to a joint session of Congress in February 2009 that he would begin working with Congress to construct a plan for health care reform. In March of 2009, President Obama formally began the reform process and held a conference with industry leaders to discuss reform and requested reform be enacted before the Congressional summer recess (Patient Protection Affordable Care Act, 2010). Members met for a series of meetings to discuss the development of a health care reform bill. Over the course of three months, this group, consisting of Senators Max Baucus (D-Montana), Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Kent Conrad (D-North Dakota), Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), Jeff Bingaman (D-New Mexico), and Mike Enzi (R-Wyoming), met for more than 60 hours, and the principles that they discussed became the foundation of the Senate's health care reform bill (Patient Protection Affordable Care Act, 2010). This meeting of the minds resulted in the President signing into law on March 23rd, 2010 the PPACA. The Congressional Budget Office estimates, the legislation will reduce the number of uninsured residents by 32 million, leaving 23 million uninsured residents in 2019 after the

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