Research Paper Affordable Health Care Law

The Affordable Care Act approved by President Obama in March 2010 brought remarkable benefits for senior citizens. This law allows seniors to take better care of their health because it offers them discounts in some medical services, improving overall their current Medicare program.

Before the Affordable Health Act was approved, millions of seniors were having trouble to pay their prescriptions since they fell into a coverage gap known as the “Doughnut Hole”. In these cases, seniors had to pay for their prescriptions from their own pocket causing them a great inconvenience. According to the website HealCare.gov, 17 million of seniors fell within this gap. Under the Medicare Plan, prescriptions were covered only if they were less than $2,830 or above $6,440. For this reason, many seniors did not receive any help to pay for their medicine and had to assume these costs themselves.

Nowadays, seniors who did not receive any benefits for being in the Doughnut Hole are now receiving great discounts on their prescriptions. The discounts honored are: 50% discount in brand name drugs and until 14% in generic drugs. On President’s Obama website, it’s being exposed that more than 3.6 million of elderly have benefit from this law. It also indicates that the average of savings is of $600, for those who fell into the Medicare gap. With this law, it is expected that by 2020 the Medicare gap will no longer exist and seniors will be fully covered. It is important to mention than original benefits from Medicare coverage have not been eliminated or reduced with this act.

The Affordable Care Act includes many preventive services offered free of charge that improves the standard of life of the elderly. These services includes: annual doctor’s visits, smoking cessation counseling, mammograms, different checkups for detection of cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, cancer, etc. Moreover, seniors who paid out of their own pocket for their prescriptions on 2010 received a...