Obamacare Vs the NHS

On Friday 24th March, Donald Trump suffered his first big setback when his healthcare bill was withdrawn before getting voted in Congress.

President Trump didn’t hold back from blaming the Democrats for his defeat, but if we look closely, this could not be the real truth behind the outcome. The Republicans needed 215 votes in the House to pass the bill. They occupy 273 out of 435 seats and before the bill was pulled still around 33 Republicans were in opposition.

Some of them were said to disagree with the severe cuts that the bill would have had on the health coverage and others were said to think the change wasn’t enough.

The President is strongly convinced that, despite the bill being pulled, “Obamacare unfortunately will explode” and “Democrats will come to us and say, ‘Look, let’s get together and get a great health care bill or plan that’s really great for the people of our country.”

Everyone is aware of the fact that Trump wants to “repeal and replace Obamacare”, but do people really know what Obamacare is and how it differs from our National Health Service (NHS) in the UK?

The actual name of the federal statute is Affordable Care Act (ACA), enacted by President Obama in 2010. Under Obamacare, everyone is required to have medical insurance to receive medical treatments and it is very likely that the patients have to pay a co-payment to the insurer after receiving the treatments they needed.

This is the first and most dramatic difference between ACA and NHS. Under NHS in fact, no insurance is required and everyone can get the treatments they need. It’s a completely public and socialist health system, opposed to the Americans’ private one.

This could be seen as a really good advantage, but it also means that waiting lists for appointments might be very long and innovations are not really encouraged.

It could be argued that, considering people are paying for private health care in the US, their service could be better than the UK one, but as people who have had experiences with both said, this isn’t necessarily true.

Both the services are said to be very efficient, but Americans can’t deny the very expensive side of their health care. Indeed, given the fact that the National Health Service is completely free, it means that even those who aren’t able to afford the payments will be given treatment. This doesn’t happen in the US and it is believed to be something to work on.

Trump’s latest defeat of the bill could be really helpful as it could force Republicans and Democrats to work together to improve the Affordable Care Act, considering both parties think it need repair. Democrats have in fact confirmed they would be keen on working with Republicans on such changes.

For now, as the House Speaker Mr Ryan said in his speech to the press “Obamacare is the law in the land, it’s going to remain the law of the land until it’s replaced.”