Introduction
The United States of America’s political system is described as democratic with Republican and Democratic parties forming the majority. Since time in sundry, exercising democracy during elections, especially on campaign platform, has reached maturity. In any presidential election, it is apparent that a Democratic Party nominee faces off with a Republican Party nominee.
America’s presidential election results are often determined by policy inclination and practicality as perceived by the public and technocrats. Specifically, the politics of the Tea Party and the Affordable Care Act have closely interacted in the past in the opposition of the ObamaCare.
Directly, the Affordable Care Act is one of the tests of popularity of the Tea Party outfit against its opponents. Thus, the influence of the Tea Party in the Affordable Care Act cannot be dismissed. This analytical treatise attempts to explicitly discuss the Affordable Care Act (ObamaCare) and the Tea Party on the tenet of how these topics interact with each other.
The Affordable Care Act
Despite the controversy it courted, the ObamaCare (Affordable Care Act) has presented a comprehensive health policy which mainly adopts the redistribution economics to ensure that every American is covered under the scheme (US Department of Health and Human Services par. 11). Despite initial rejection by a section of Americans, the policy carried the day as it promised to make health very affordable to the low income groups. At present, the only challenge is implementation since it will have to cover very many people.
Through partnership with insurance companies, this policy has been described as basically what the Americans need after the just ending financial crisis characterized by reduced disposable income. This policy has been successful in Norway and its only determinant of success in America will be its implementation module. As proposed in the policy, the aspect of individual mandate has been supported by both houses and even President Obama’s opponent from the Republican Party.
The aspects of fairness, objectivity, and transparency define a policy. Objectivity minimizes biasness and prejudice when drawing a policy. On the other hand, fairness involves collective consultation with stakeholders and adopting consultative decisions. Transparency involves the aspects of proactive reviews that are consistent with the performance evaluation and monitoring system. Reflectively, the Affordable Care Act proposed by President Obama contains all these aspects within its scope.
This policy on healthcare is objective and targets to make healthcare provision affordable to the upper and lower economic ends citizens of America. It has specific projections and intentions that are multifaceted and based on recommendations of the expert and other stakeholders. The transparency aspect of this act is that it has the target monitoring unit and active reporting channel during implementation (Wittes 17).
Though very complex, the Affordable Care Act is intrinsic of the demand and supply in the market, social, and public demands against a backdrop of manageable cost constraints of health provision in America. The main components of the policy can be quantifiable for viability, ease of implementation, and realization of the intended goals which are reducing the cost of health provision and providing health insurance to all the citizens of America.
The ObamaCare Act has special interest on the multiple disadvantaged Americans who could not afford the private healthcare systems of the day. Multiple disadvantaged groups in health status refer to groups within the population that are victims to worst health risks due to healthcare policy discrimination.
Due to their low socioeconomic status, they are not able to afford quality Medicare. Disadvantaged groups strain to get healthcare services due to low income bracket. Often these groups exist within the larger population as is the case in America where low income and middle income brackets are more than 80% of the population. Due to their low living standards, these groups are the major beneficiaries of affirmative healthcare actions provided by the Affordable Care Act (IIzetzki 2).
The Affordable Care Act has two parts. The first part deals with health insurance. The second part is the Medicare insurance coverage which helps pay for the doctor’s services, outpatient hospitals care, and some other medical services that are not provided by part A. There is no need to pay a monthly payment (premium) for part A since taxes paid prior to the retiring from employment are earmarked for this cover. Part B, on the contrary, assists in the defraying the cost for these medical services when needed (IIzetzki 3).
The Tea Party
The tea party is a populist American outfit associated with libertarian and conservative inclinations on political and economic policy implementation and functionality. As a movement, this association has direct influence on political future of America and policies debated and passed by the congress.
Specifically, resounding interest surround the influence of foreign currency on the dollar as a protectionist assembly of tools for mass influence. This outfit offers its members a platform for awareness creation on the economic, social, health and political factors that directly affect the Americans.
Reflectively, several private individuals with republican, libertarian, democratic, and independent inclinations identify themselves with this outfit. This community perceive themselves as true Americans who would do anything to protect and reaffirm the constitutional founding upon which their nation was laid by statement. Tea party movement consists of members drawn from all professional fields. The members of this outfit are united by their perception on how the political leadership of the US is handling its duties and policies.
The Tea Party has remained in the front line in promoting democracy within the US through promotion of freedom of speech by sponsoring its members of parliament to pass critical bills and hold series of pro or anti government protests. Basically, sustainable democracy as enshrined in the beliefs of the Tea Party outfit offers a practical sketch map for intellectual development and political maturity.
Thus, this group endeavors to campaign for sustainable democracy which ensures reliable governance and democratic issue base confrontation of challenges affecting the citizens from insecurity, social justice, and respect of human rights. Reflectively, sustainable democracy as a concept of the Tea Party’s institutional approach is applicable in reforms and offers a solution based management of government institutions.
In the realms of social secularization, the transitional facilities of the Tea Party outfit assist the institutionalization of units of the American society to create an accepted mode of interaction. The operating mechanisms of these efforts are in the traditional and economic development of the US societal conditions promoting public interest. Interestingly, many of the Tea Party members oppose the ObamaCare (“Defund ObamaCare now” par. 7).
The Tea Party and the Affordable Care Act
Process evaluation examines actual implementation and development within a specific act such as the Affordable Care Act. Reflectively, the independent Tea Party has reviewed the quantifiable fulfillment of targets of the Affordable Care Act as unfair to the middle income household since they view the act as an opportunity for the government to collect more taxes.
On the other hand, impact evaluation examines long term changes that have surfaced as part of the success or failure of a project. It examines the long term effectiveness of policy based programs after implementation. The Tea Party members from the republican inclination are in the forefront of impeaching the Affordable Care Act because of the fear of letting the government to run their healthcare (“Defund ObamaCare now” par. 7).
Since the Affordable Care Act is an intriguing idea, the Tea Party focuses on a mirrored reflection of what a society would like to visualize from a string of intertwining ideas. Instead of adopting the impersonal consciousness, stepwise process, and absolute necessity assumptions aimed at creating a sustainable, friendly, and acceptable irksome feeling to the ObamaCare, the Tea Party has adopted a partisan approach in their criticism. In fact, it is only the minority members who seem to oppose the act in totality.
At quantitative level, the Tea Party outfit does not adopt the expected continuous process of embracing both ecological dimension and internal operation engine as a measure of variance between the benefits and demerits of the ObamaCare. Thus, it is apparent that the Tea Party is likely to lose its objectivity since their negative stand on the ObamaCare is not supported by any public poll. Thus, they cannot claim to be representing the interests of the true Americans in opposing the Affordable Care Act.
Personal reflection
Change advocacy is a necessity towards actualizing ideas acceptable to the society. Irrespective of the social and economic climate in which change agents operate, the questions to consider in change advocacy revolve around policy solutions, engagement, administration, and change argumentation. In the America society, citizens have adopted bureaucratic, ideological, legislative, and mass appeal to advocate for change.
The Tea Party outfit operates on the bureaucratic, mass appeal and ideological appeal when supporting or opposing government act. Under the bureaucratic arrangement, individual involved is often an expert with vast experience in the subject of change. For instance, in the new health plan proposed by the Obama administration, experts have presented a well researched optional approach into health provision to the government decision makers with an intention of convincing this group to accept their proposal.
In practicing ideological advocacy as a means of influencing change, individuals sharing the same ideology can mobilize together in protests and demonstrations to express their dissatisfactions to the decision making organs for appropriate actions as is the case with the Tea Party outfit.
Conclusion
The ObamaCare has given special attention to the disadvantaged groups in health services provision. The ObamaCare has made healthcare affordable and easily available to the poor Americans. However, the Tea Party is against this act since the bureaucrats have proposed better approach towards provision of affordable healthcare to the Americans.
Just like any other political or social outfit, the Tea Party has considerable influence on the successful implementation of the Affordable Care Act. From this discussion, it is apparent that individuals sharing the same ideology can mobilize together in protests and demonstrations to express their dissatisfactions on different government policies.
Works Cited
Defund ObamaCare now 2013. Web.
IIzetzki, Ethan. In its opposition to the Affordable Care Act, the Tea Party is not defending the ideals of the founding fathers, but subverting them. 07 Oct. 2013. Web.
US Department of Health and Human Services. Affordable Care Act. Cat. no. Washington, 2012. HHSgov. Web.
Wittes, Bejamin. Campaign 2012: Twelve Independent Ideas for Improving American Public Policy, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2010. Print.