Question

Based on the legislation passed by the government, is the United States health care system truly a free and market-based system? Support your conclusions.

Answer 1

The legislation passed by the government is the American Health Care act of 2017 that partially repeals some part of the affordable care act (ACA) or Obama care. But, the new legislation brings sufficient government intervention that ensure that health care system is not truly a market driven system. It happened due to the reason that the cost of health care is highest among all the OECD nations and the USA being a country with diversified population, it becomes imperative for the government to intervene and make it possible for the middle class or lower middle class, poor or senior citizen to come on terms with the health care.
Some of the guidelines of the American Health Care act of 2017 highlight the active government role in the health care system. These are as follows.
1.   Making employers to consider those people also for insurance who have pre-existing diseases
2.   Making imperative for the employer to offer health insurance to people, though young people can opt for lower level of insurance by paying the lower premium
3.   Reducing the tax or penalty upon the employers that was earlier in ACA if not providing insurance to the employees
4.   Reducing benefits (but still maintaining the benefits) for the poor people and coming up to help the people with poor income background
5.   Taking initiatives to reduce the taxes upon people with higher income under different conditions

So, above guidelines show that government is pulling away from the bigger benefits offers to the people, or higher taxes applied to the firms not complying with the ACA, but the existing legislation still does enough to reduce the cost of health care by making necessary interventions.