The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (commonly referred to as ObamaCare or PPACA), which was signed into US law in 2010, generated a lot of noise from both supporters and detractors. This book argues that the changes introduced by ObamaCare were, in the long history of government intervention in the US health system, generally not as new or novel as claimed.
The scope of the changes introduced by ObamaCare is very wide and covers, among others: the health insurance industry, pharmaceuticals, employers, employees, or the uninsured. The structure of the book shows the individual causes, key assumptions, and impacts of the reform on individual elements or areas of the US health system. One of the most important aspects of the work is analysis of the phenomenon of the so-called ‘death spiral’. The changes introduced by ObamaCare reform make it possible to investigate the causes of this phenomenon on a country-wide scale and enable a broader analysis of its effects.
The book will be of great interest to readers in the economics, management and policy of health and health care.
1. Reasons for passing the ObamaCare reform 2. Objectives and changes introduced by ObamaCare 3. Effects of the changes introduced by Obamacare 4. Overview and evaluation of proposals for modification of the solutions introduced by ObamaCare
Biography
Łukasz Jasiński is an assistant professor employed at the Faculty of Economics of the Maria Curie-Sklodowska University (Poland, Lublin). In 2021, he completed his doctoral dissertation entitled Market processes and interventionism in the health system of the United States of America from the view of the Austrian school of economics. He is also an economist at the Mises Institute of Economic Education (Poland, Wroclaw), where he publishes his original series of essays entitled On the way to the market health system. In 2022, on the basis of the decision of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Lublin branch), his book, entitled Markets vs Public Health Systems: Perspectives from the Austrian School of Economics, was selected for the best research work for 2021 (Humanities and Social Sciences).
Łukasz Jasiński's The Economics of ObamaCare offers critical insights into the PPACA to suggest why this latest effort to reform the US healthcare market failed to offer promised results. His analysis adds an essential contribution to understanding the economics of health reform.
Dr. Roberta Herzberg, Distinguished Senior Fellow, Mercatus Center at George Mason University
Few Europeans understand how American healthcare works, and the same applies to Americans when it comes to Europe. Yet politicians across both sides of the Atlantic paint the other system as the socialist ideal or a capitalist boogeyman, neither of which are true. Yes, things are complicated, but Łukasz’s book is a read for anyone trying to understand the American system.
Zilvinas Silenas, President, Foundation for Economic Education
