The ACA guarantees coverage to individuals 18 years or older, regardless of pre-existing conditions, and also makes available a wide range of preventative health services at no cost to individuals. More than that, it makes it impossible for insurers to price plans based on factors like pre-existing conditions, age, or even tobacco use.
For those individuals at or near the poverty line, the ACA also offers a number of subsidies to make it easier to afford healthcare coverage. With millions of previously uninsured Americans suddenly receiving federally-subsidized health insurance coverage, a significant cost burden emerges. A significant portion of this burden is paid by taxes, by penalties paid by insurers and employers not following the mandates, and by forced reforms on the healthcare industry itself.
What are those mandates, to be exact? That answer varies widely depending on the size of the business in question. The ACA identifies small to mid-sized businesses as falling into one of three distinct categories: those businesses with less 50 employees, those with employees, and those with or more. The ACA has no mandate requiring that businesses with 49 employees or less provide health care benefits of any kind to their employees.
On the surface, this makes it easy for these small businesses to understand their responsibility; at the same time, the ACA has brought with it a number of changes that may still impact the way such businesses think about benefits. The Small Business Health Options Program SHOP Marketplace is a national health insurance exchange designed to give small businesses an opportunity to access more affordable benefits packages.
These small businesses won't be able to absorb the costs of Obamacare without passing some or all of the cost onto employees. The only other options are abandoning employees to the exchanges or cutting jobs altogether.
This leaves me wondering whether the country could have avoided the law's dire economic consequences if our elected officials had first paused to read the legislation and carefully considered whether the law would, in practice, meet their lofty promises. Ben Franklin summed it up best: "If passion drives, let reason hold the reins. Susan Gabay is a co-founder and managing director of Bluestone Capital Partners, an investment banking firm located in northern Virginia. To read more columns like this, go to the opinion front page or follow us on twitter USATopinion or Facebook.
Facebook Twitter Email. It was the top issue owners wanted Trump to address in a survey of owners and prospective buyers in late February by BizBuy Sell, a marketplace for small businesses. Among respondents, 60 percent favored an ACA repeal. The major reason: spiraling health insurance premiums — often a result of insurance companies fleeing the marketplace. It is a trend affecting business owners in all states. Ross Coulter, 49, and his wife, who run a two-person public relations firm in Dallas, have been hunting for a new health insurance plan after Humana notified them it was discontinuing their current one.
They had no immediate plans to slow their search after the House vote. Some Americans who have bought high-deductible plans to lower their premiums — a popular strategy amidst rising premiums — have found that high out-of-pocket costs make getting medical care unaffordable. When Paula Muto, a vascular and general surgeon in Lawrence and North Hanover, Massachusetts, looked into unpaid bills in her solo private practice recently, she found that many were for patients who had high-deductible plans.
Packard enrolled in health insurance through the exchanges the week of the election, an irony that is not lost on her.
Her plan should be safe through January Read: Small-business owners could see cash benefits from a Trump presidency. Houser, who is also an executive committee member of Main Street Alliance, is concerned about the 20 million people insured through the ACA losing coverage. A key, high-profile lawsuit that went to the Supreme Court, which upheld the law, was spearheaded by the National Federation of Independent Business, a nonprofit whose membership is mostly composed of small-business operators.
The NFIB, which said it believed the law unduly burdened small businesses, challenged the constitutionality of the ACA, with the case decided against the group in summer Offering health care is essential for her business to offer competitive benefits with big-box retailers — to which she often loses employees — but over the past six years, it has been out of reach, she said.
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