The Future of Medicine
Andrew Hovey
GEN 499
Eric Fox
03/03/14

In theory, the Affordable Care Act is a great plan but the execution has been terrible because People do not understand what the ACA even actually allows them to do. The ability to keep insurance that was already owned was a fallacy, and the ability of people to actually get insurance via the ACA has been mediocre at best. It does however, represent our best shot at a country where everyone has access to medical care at an affordable rate and moves us toward what I believe to be an eventuality and something that is sorely needed, socialized medicine. The reason that I believe it is sorely needed is due to the fact that the fiasco with the website marketplace rollout involved with the ACA has shown us that even the government is not capable of keeping track of all of the different insurance providers and quite frankly the only thing they have done is confuse people as to what coverage they can receive. This would not be necessary if there were one non-private entity that handled insurance for the people. Many European countries use socialized medicine and admittedly, there are varying degrees of success but our system is broken. Competing healthcare companies, different degrees of care and skyrocketing costs have made healthcare un-palletable for many. Just shopping for healthcare on the Heathcare.gov website, one can see how confusing and frustrating the search for healthcare plans can be, especially if you are in the middle class. Not only are there several different plans and varying degrees of coverage but they are all so expensive, especially for those of us who had great coverage through ours or our spouse’s employer but were forced to change due to Obamacare. Since when does it make sense to charge an employer more for having a better