Describe the political environment surrounding the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and evaluate the legislation on the basis of its intended purposes versus its present realities.

What will be an ideal response?

Students should discuss how national health care has been an issue for the past 50 years, with attempts made to address it specifically during the Clinton Administration by proposing a single-provider, one-size-fits-all approach to national health insurance. By 2009, the issue of health care was the center of the debate between presidential candidates in both the Democratic and Republican parties. Republicans wanted a market-based approach to health care reform if any changes at all. The Democrats wanted a much broader approach to health care that would require every citizen to participate in a health-care plan either through their employer, individual market-based health care exchanges, or expanded Medicaid benefits. After much debate, President Obama was able to push legislation through both houses of Congress in 2010, creating the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. But political and economic pressures have diluted the intended results of the policy and created unintended consequences such as inflationary pressures on premiums as well as a declining number of participating providers. In reality, the policy that was designed to create economic marketplace pressures of competition and deflationary pricing has actually resulted in the exact opposite of the intended results. Students may proceed further with their own observations and opinions of Obamacare but should discuss the political and economic realities of the policy.