Obamacare: Rights, Market and Political Struggle

Abstract

Obama Administration made a deep reform of US Health Care in 2010. Analyse the dysfunctions and costs that provokes a private and market based health care system, as well as the political controversy that followed such reform, is the main objective of this article. It is also analysed, basically from an economic point of view, the so-called "individual mandate", i.e., the legal obligation to contract a medical insurance, considered as the key of the Obama reform. Finally, the article studies the Supreme Court arguments considering the individual mandate a tax and, consequently, according to US Constitution.