What does the Affordable Care Act really mean?

Since I teach biology, including classes related to human health, I often get this sort of question.  I know this means lots of people have the same questions, so here's my understanding.

The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) means that everyone in the US must buy health insurance.  If you get health insurance from your job NOTHING WILL CHANGE except that you will have to tell the IRS that you have health insurance next time you fill our your taxes.

If you do not have health insurance you can go to www.healthcare.gov to look at your options. The government has created "exchanges" so that people with low incomes can find low cost insurance programs.

But, you say, I'm young and healthy, I don't need insurance.  Sure, unless you fall down the stairs and break your leg, or get in a car accident or grow older.  We will all need health care at some point in our lives.  The goal of insurance is that if enough people pay into the system when they are healthy, then when you DO get sick you will have to pay less.  It's a way of spreading out the cost.

But that's SOCIALISM. 

Yep.  And I'm good with that.  My husband had to have gall bladder surgery recently and his medical bills totaled over $10,000.  This was a relatively simple illness.  Could you afford to pay for that all at once?

What else do you get?

The insurance companies have to spend 85% of their income on health care.  Which limits overhead (things like CEO pay and paperwork) and profit.

If you have a pre-existing condition the insurance still has to cover you - things like allergies, asthma, or even that ankle you sprained when you were 10 and that you re-injured as an adult.

There is no lifetime maximum cap.  This means that if you are in a horrific car accident when you are 20 - something and it costs $1 million (not out of the question, sadly) but then when you are 65 you need hearth by-pass surgery the insurance company will still have to pay.  Before the Affordable Care Act they could refuse to pay for your by-pass because you had already cost them too much money.

This type of health care bring the US more in line with the rest of the "industrialized" world.  Countries where people don't have to worry about a single health care problem causing them to go bankrupt (the number one cause of American bankruptcies is health care costs!).  Countries where people live longer, healthier lives.  It may not be ideal to everyone's viewpoint but the system has been proven to work in other free countries, why don't we give it a try here?