Health care in the United States has become one of the largest and most debated issues in society today, and people are expressing concerns about quality, accessibility, choice, cost, and dozens of other factors. Politicians on both sides of the aisle have tried to use the health care issue to their advantage: Democrats talk about the right that all Americans should have to quality health care, while Republicans hammer away at the enormous costs and its impact on the public deficit. and on businesses. With the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) on March 23, 2010, the debate intensified. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the U.S. government agency that administers Medicare and Medicaid, found that the legislation would do little to stem rising health care spending that is expected to rise to more than 20 percent of gross domestic product in next decade. However, at the same time, President Obama stated that “the health care reform bill we passed last year will slow rising costs, which is partly why nonpartisan economists have said that repeal of the health care bill would add a quarter of a trillion dollars to our deficit. My administration anticipates significant savings from health care reform.” This article will not attempt to address the question of whether the overall impact of the law will be more positive or negative for the U.S. economy. The goal of this article is to outline why addressing health care is so economically important and then to explore some specific aspects of the PPACA legislation, such as the coverage mandate, pre-existing condition elimination, and rescissions of coverage, allowing dependent coverage up to age 26, and the additional provisions… halfway through the document… do not provide any degree of understanding of the overall impact this legislation will have. However, it is possible to examine various aspects of the legislation and predict the implications of such changes. Some protections provided by the bill, such as expanding coverage for dependents, eliminating pre-existing conditions, and prohibiting termination of coverage, will have a positive impact on some people but will generally cause higher healthcare costs. Other aspects of the bill, such as medical loss ratio requirements and coverage mandates, will impact businesses differently. I believe that, overall, smaller employers will gain some benefit from the legislation, while larger employers will likely be harmed. However, it will be years after this law comes into force, and probably after it is amended, for the real impacts of the legislation to be known..