The alarmist headlines shouting about how many people are losing coverage because of the Affordable Care Act are nothing new. Most recently, the news was about 100,000 people who were potentially being kicked out of ‘Obamacare.’ When you hear of someone being kicked out of their health care coverage, you often feel outraged. It’s a shame that the majority never felt the same outrage about the lack of healthcare that most Americans were covered by, or more correctly, not covered by, before the Affordable Care Act came into effect.

Of course, like all alarmist headlines, the ‘100,000 people being kicked off Obamacare’ story has a lot more to it. During sign-up for health care through the act, the citizenship and immigration records of nearly 1 million people didn’t match up with the current federal records. Of those million people, approximately 100,000 of them never submitted the documents necessary to prove their citizenship or filed claims to correct the mistakes. It is those 100,000 people whose health care is ending on Sept. 30.

Ah, that makes more sense. Suddenly it’s not so shocking that some people should be losing their coverage, seeing they submitted inaccurate information. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone claim that The Affordable Care Act would be perfect coming straight out of the gate. There are certainly things that will be changed and improved over the years; thus is the evolution of business and government.

The biggest fight over The Affordable Care Act took place in front of the Supreme Court. Many Republicans called the individual mandate part of the act unconstitutional. However, just as a reminder, President George W. Bush supported the individual mandate. Even before this, both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan supported various universal health care mandates, and prior to the Affordable Care Act, many Republicans considered it a personal responsibility to have health care. Few concerns over the constitutionality of an individual mandate were raised by Republicans until the idea was broached by the opposite party.

I, like many others, have little patience for these fear inducing headlines. They get shouted and repeated without any actual investigation, and once investigation is done, the logical and clear reasons as to why some people might lose their coverage become obvious.

The Affordable Care Act has already established a lot of good change. For example, preexisting conditions can no longer make you ineligible for coverage, something that affected thousands of people and ruined the financial stability of thousands of others. You can no longer be denied emergency services because your insurance doesn’t cover hospitals in the area. Young adults, those under the age of 26, are allowed to remain on their parents health plan- this is one perk that I am personally glad for.

The Affordable Care Act, a phrase that strikes fear and hatred into the hearts of some and hope and promise into others, will always be a topic of heated debate. However, it’s not going anywhere, so the best thing to do is read up on its history, and on your rights.