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The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) also known as, "Obamacare", was created to help increase access to affordable health insurance for millions of Americans without coverage and make health insurance more affordable for those already covered. It was enacted by the 111th Congress and signed by President Barack Obama. The Affordable Care Act represents the United States health care systems most significant regulatory overhaul and expansion of coverage since Medicare & Medicaid. It has helped make numerous changes in the way health care is financed, organized, and delivered.
The ACA restructures the private health insurance market, sets minimum standards for health coverage, creates a mandate for the establishment by 2014 of state-based insurance marketplaces for the purchase of private health insurance. ACA also incorporated numerous Medicare payment provisions intended to reduce the rate of growth in spending. Additionally, ACA creates incentives for promoting primary care and prevention; for example, by increasing primary care payment rates under Medicare and Medicaid, covering some preventative services without cost-sharing, and funding community-based prevention and employer wellness programs, among other things.
Implementation of ACA began upon the law's enactment in 2010 and will continue to unfold over the next few decades; which involve all the major health care stakeholders, including the federal and state governments, as well as employers, insurers, and health care providers Implementing some parts of the law will entail extensive rulemaking and other actions by federal agencies. By 2016 it was estimated that the number of people that were uninsured before the Affordable Care Act, between 20–24 million people, were now covered under the Affordable Care Act. Although this policy has required a substantial amount of federal funding and has undergone a number of legal challenges, it has been successful in providing healthcare coverage to all American citizens.