The passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has impacted many areas of health care.The ACA is federal legislation aimed at reforming the private insurance market, expanding the insured, and changing the way medical decisions are made (Silvers, 2013). The private insurance market now has certain standards that must be met in their insurance policies.Some of the most publicly embraced standards are essential covered benefits, coveringpre-existing conditions, limiting deductibles and lifetime limits, and extending coverage to include children up to age 26. The number of insured increased by over 15 million people as a result of the ACA, with the majority of those being from the expansion of Medicaid. Lastly, the ACA includesinitiatives for alternative delivery systems for health care.These reforms resulted in the insurance market becoming more competitive.With certain standards required for insurance plans, private insurers haveto become more competitive to maintain their market share. The other significant impact to the health care market was theresult of more insured individuals.This created an increase in the demand of health care services. However, this increase in insured (and therefore demand)did not address the shortage of providers that would follow.

What the ACA did not do was to keep national healthcare expenditures from continuing its spiral upward as a percentage of GDP.The continued growth of health care in relation to GDP continues to be alarming.In addition to this spending trend, there are still many Americans without adequate access to health care. As a result, universal healthcare in the U.S. continues to be a source of debate.The U.S. is the only industrialized nation without universal health care. The debate of universal health care brings up both advantages and disadvantages to providers and patients. Let us discuss some of those. An advantage toprovidersof universal health coverage would be a simplification of the administrative system. Approximately 34% of national health expenditures are spent on administration (Himmelstein et al., 2020).One system could bring savings to providers. At the same time, a disadvantage to providers would be less negotiating power with regard to pricing for patient services asinsurance competition would be minimal. Thepatientalso has advantages and disadvantages under universal health coverage.An advantage to patients would be equitable access to insurance leading to betterhealth and financial security.This is especially relatable to lower income and vulnerable populations. However, arguably one of the biggest disadvantages would be lack of access to providers due to a shortage of supply. Long wait times are a common complaint of patients withinuniversal health plans ofother countries.

The U.S.economywould also experience advantages and disadvantages under universal health coverage. It continues to be difficult to have meaningful dialogue regarding universal health coverage in the U.S.Americans generally have more negative attitudes regarding government than most other democratic countries (Vladeck, 2003). The advantage of a universal health coverage plan would be lower health care costs through government negotiation and regulation.An example of this would be addressing the high cost of medications.Lowering health care costs area path to reducing expenditures as a percentage of GDP. Alternatively, the disadvantages of universal health coverage would be lossof innovation and competition that exists in the private market. Revenues within the private market help fund research and development.

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