Discussion

read the following discussion post and no more than 200 words respond thoughtfully

Common law, statutory law, and administrative law are three sources of law in the US legal system (Pozgar & Santucci, 2019). Common law refers to the body of principles that evolve from and expand upon judicial decisions that arise during the trial of court cases (Pozgar & Santucci, 2019, p. 20). United States common law has its origin in English common law (Pozgar & Santucci, 2019). The principles of common law are precedent, res judicata, and stare decisis (Pozgar & Santucci, 2019). Statutory law is created and passed by federal and state legislatures; it can abolish any rule of common law, it can do so only by express words (Pozgar & Santucci, 2019, p. 24).

 

          The principles of common law were used to revise the individual mandate that was implemented as a part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to split the risk between healthy people and people with preexisting conditions. Thus, everyone would be able to purchase more affordable health insurance, and sick people wont get denied to obtain health coverage. The constitutionality of individual mandate was challenged multiple times in Supreme Court. In 2012 the mandate was justified to be constitutional due to a penalty being a tax created by Congress (Simmons-Duffin, 2019).

 

          The individual mandate was altered by the statutory law The Tax Cut and Jobs Act which was passed by Congress in December 2017 (Norris, 2021). The tax bill repealed the individual mandate, and, without the penalty mandate was declared unconstitutional (Norris, 2021). Although, when the tax bill became effective in 2019 some states such as Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, California, and the District of Columbia have implemented their coverage mandates and penalties for non-compliance (Norris, 2021).

 

          I believe that eliminating the penalty was not the wisest decision of the government. Under the ACA in 2018 91.5% of Americans had health coverage (Smiljanic, 2021). According to Norris (2021), the number of enrolled in insurance plans decreased from about 11.75 million in 2018 to 11.41 million in 2020. Although the elimination of the mandate didnt dramatically decrease the enrollment, I believe that there will be much more serious consequences. The healthcare expenditures increase every year so do the insurance premiums. According to Pozgar & Santucci (2019), in 2017 insurance premiums increased by 10% for those who are not eligible for subsidies, and without enough healthy individuals enrolled insurance companies will start denying coverage to those with preexisting conditions. Therefore, eventually, we will be back in the pre-ACA era.

 

References.

 

Norris, L. (2021, December 8). Is there still a penalty for being uninsured in 2021? https://www.verywellhealth.com/obamacare-penalty-for-being-uninsured-4132434

 

Pozgar, G.D. & Santucci, N. (2019). Legal aspects of health care administration. (13th ed.). Sudbury: Jones and Bartlet

 

Simmons-Duffin, S. (2019, October 14). Trump is trying hard to thwart Obamacare. How’s that going? https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/10/14/768731628/trump-is-trying-hard-to-thwart-obamacare-hows-that-going

 

Smiljanic, S. (2021, July 18). 27+ Affordable Care Act statistics and facts (2021). https://policyadvice.net/insurance/insights/affordable-care-act-statistics/