Healthcare.gov is the official site that is run by the United States government that gives people the basic information they need on obtaining healthcare insurance in the United States, following the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, most commonly known as Obamacare.
The website came in for a degree of criticism once the act was implanted, simply because it was almost overwhelmed by the sheer volume of people trying to access it.
One of the provisions of the affordable care act or Obama care which healthcare.gov seeks to focus on, is the provision of health Exchanges.
Health care exchanges are the online marketplaces where people can sign up to see what plans are available in the state in which they live.
The original intent is for every individual state to provide its own marketplace, where people would be able to see which insurance companies were participating and what healthcare plans they were providing.
In the event a number of individual states declined to participate, and as such these marketplaces are effectively run by the federal government, through health.gov.
Healthcare Reform
Healthcare.gov is both a website that gives people a huge amount of practical information about their health care insurance needs, and that same time a practical portal for people to obtain health care through these online market exchanges.
Health care reform in the United States has been a hugely difficult divisive political issue. The reality of the health-care reforms that have taken place is they do provide a level of cover for a significant number of people who beforehand had no insurance cover at all.
One of the other primary intents behind Obamacare was to prevent insurance companies from applying restrictions to people who had what are known as pre-existing conditions.
All insurance costs and benefits are effectively calculated on the basis of risk, or at least on the insurance companies perception of risk .
An individual or family who have a medical condition that the insurance company knows is going to cost them money would be considered a higher risk than an individual or family who did not have such medical conditions.
On that basis insurance companies would have either declined to ensure them, or would have charged significant premiums and high deductibles to deter them taking the insurance .
One of the major reforms of Obama care was to make sure that insurance companies could do neither of these things to people who had so-called pre-existing conditions.
The intent was to create a level playing field. Whilst this is an incredibly good thing in many ways, it does wait to be seen how insurance companies will effectively cope with the additional risk involved, and whether or not they will try other ways of getting round this prevention of costs charging basis.
