More Small Businesses Offering Health Care To Employees Thanks To Obamacare Jan. 6 2011 - 2:18 pm | 55,561 views | 5 recommendations | 99 comments By RICK UNGAR The first statistics are coming in and, to the surprise of a great many, Obamacare might just be working to bring health care to working Americans precisely as promised. The major health insurance companies around the country are reporting a significant increase in small businesses offering health care benefits to their employees. Why? Because the tax cut created in the new health care reform law providing small businesses with an incentive to give health benefits to employees is working. We certainly did not expect to see this in this economy,” said Gary Claxton, who oversees an annual survey of employer health plans for the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation. “It’s surprising.” How significant is the impact? While we won’t have full national numbers until small businesses file their 2010 tax returns this April, the anecdotal evidence is as meaningful as it is unexpected. United Health Group, Inc., the nation’s largest health insurer, added 75,000 new customers working in businesses with fewer than 50 employees. Coventry Health Care, Inc., a large provider of health insurance to small businesses, added 115,000 new workers in 2010 representing an 8% jump. Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City, the largest health insurer in the Kansas City, Mo. area, reports an astounding 58% increase in the number of small businesses purchasing coverage in their area since April, 2010-one month after the health care reform legislation became law. “One of the biggest problems in the small-group market is affordability,” said Ron Rowe, who oversees small-group sales for the Kansas City operation for Blue Cross Blue Shied. “We looked at the tax credit and said, ‘this is perfect.” Rowe went on to say that 38% of the businesses it is signing up had not offered health benefits before. Whatever your particular ideology, there is simply no denying that these statistics are incredibly heartening. However, for those of you who cannot get past your opposition, even for a moment of universal good news, let’s break it down. The primary, most enduring complaint of the opponents of the ACA has been that the law is deathly bad for small business. Apparently, small businesses, and their employees, do not agree. The next argument has been that the PPACA is a job killer. If these small businesses found the new law to be so onerous, why have so many of them voluntarily taken advantage of the benefits provided in the law to give their employees these benefits? They were not mandated to do so. And to the extent that the coming mandate obligations might figure into their thinking, would you not imagine they would wait until 2014 to make a move as the rules do not go into effect until that time? Of course, there is the nagging banter as to how Obamacare is leading us down the road to socialism. Let it go, folks. Private market insurance companies are experiencing significant growth because of a tax break provided by the PPACA. I may have missed the day this was discussed in economics class, but I’m pretty sure this is not a socialistic result of federal legislation. When data like this appears, we have the opportunity to really find out who is talking smack for political benefit and who actually cares about getting affordable and available health care to America’s workers. Certainly, there will be elements of the new law that will not work out exactly as planned. That’s simply reality when it comes to any new piece of landmark legislation. But if you cannot celebrate what appears to be an important early success, you really should give some thought as to where your true interests and intents lie. If you’re all about beating up on President Obama, you can conveniently forget this bit of data as if it never really happened. However, if your interest is to make health care available to more Americans, this should be a happy day for you – no matter what your ideological beliefs. http://blogs.forbes.com/rickungar/2...health-care-to-employees-thanks-to-obamacare/
Insurer for high-risk clients lowers rates Posted: Tuesday, Jan. 04, 2011 Karen Garloch writes on Health for The Charlotte Observer. Her column appears each Monday. There's good news on the health insurance front in 2011. Inclusive Health, the N.C. organization that administers state and federal high-risk health insurance pools, has reduced monthly premiums for those in the federal program. Rates for those up to age 55 have dropped by 10 percent, and for those 63 and over, premiums have decreased as much as 31 percent. This is the result of a new interpretation of a provision in the new federal health care reform law passed in 2010. The provision says premiums for older people can be no more than four times those of younger people. The biggest beneficiaries are those 55 and over. "This is the heart of our population," said Executive Director Michael Keough. "People who are waiting for Medicare. These are people who have more pre-existing conditions and may be better candidates for the high-risk pool." For example, Inclusive Health's federal program sells a policy with a $2,500 deductible followed by an 80 percent/20 percent split of medical charges. The premium for a 64-year-old non-smoker has been $592 and now drops to $412. For a 50-year-old non-smoker, the premium has dropped from $346 to $315. There is no difference in charges for women and men. N.C. legislators created Inclusive Health in January 2009 as a more affordable insurance option for people with pre-existing medical conditions who don't have access to employee-sponsored insurance or government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid. Inclusive Health also offers insurance to those who have exhausted COBRA benefits or have been laid off because their jobs were sent overseas. Last summer, Inclusive Health also began administering the new, temporary federal high-risk pool for people who have been without insurance for at least six months. "Our message to North Carolinians with pre-existing conditions...is that you are insurable," Keough said. "With these rate reductions and premium subsidies, Inclusive Health is more affordable than ever." For information: www.InclusiveHealth.org, 866-665-2117. Other health law benefits Nationally, here are some other changes that took effect Jan. 1 because of the health care reform law: Medicare Part D beneficiaries who enter the coverage gap known as the "doughnut hole" can get a 50 percent discount on eligible brand-name prescription drugs. Medicare beneficiaries no longer have to pay deductibles or co-pays for preventive services such as annual checkups, mammograms, prostate screenings, colorectal cancer screenings or bone-density measurements. To expand availability, Medicare will give a 10 percent bonus to providers of primary care services and to surgeons practicing in areas with shortages of health professionals. http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2011/01/04/1953639/insurer-for-high-risk-clients.html
Yes, a subsidy for small business owners at the expense of the taxpayer is certainly a boon(doggle). How does spreading costs around lower them? It just disguises them while they continue to rise in aggregate. When costs get spread to more and more third parties, there is less incentive to reduce them. Is corporate welfare ok now, as long as they are "small" businesses?
They get a tax break for providing the insurance. I thought you were in favor of less taxes. Now apparently you aren't in favor of less taxes. Providing incentive to provide health care is a win/win. Small businesses get a break on their taxes, and more people have insurance which saves money to the tax payer in case of an emergency which can't be paid for by the injured or ill party involved. There is no down side.
Of course it will work the problem just wasn't that hard to begin with. It's basic economies of scale, but with a two part benefit. Insure more people and spread the risk across a larger pool lowers costs. You need the mandate to insure the healthier people participate and to stop all of the unpaid bills going around at the ERs. More customers in the pool means lower premiums, less unpaid bills at the ERs means hospitals do not have to raise costs to those that do pay to cover the difference also meaning lower premiums. The last piece that needs to be addressed is what Commodore is alluding to which is basically that Americans take on too many services and treatments without enough benefit to make them worth it. Americans don't like anyone telling them what they can or cannot have just look at rhetoric like rationing and death panels to prove that. It's in Medicare and Medicaid that all of these costs are really concentrated. Costs that are not well...let's say efficient. Studies have shown that spending more money in Medicare has actually led to worse health since every procedure carries with it some risk. Problem is we may all agree that as policy for the country spending 100k on a surgery for someone 75 years old that may extend their life by 6 months is not a wise allocation of finite resources. However if that person is your grandmother you are not going to feel that way. Numerous attempts at reforming reimbursement methods have been put into pilot programs across the country in an attempt to attack this issue by holding doctors more accountable rather then just denying care. It is difficult though to divine what is wasteful from what actually works when you have a country full of people convinced anything new is good and we should have anything and everything applied to us or a member of our family regardless of cost.
I'm in favor or lower rates. "Tax breaks" or "tax credits" are often just subsidies by another name, as is the case here. http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-utl/small_business_health_care_tax_credit_scenarios.pdf So you and I and everyone else are fronting $25k to some business. That sure is a "boon" for them. This is not a tax cut, this is a cash handout to a corporation, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer. Wealth redistribution in action. How does the bill generate revenue?
One of my friends posted this on facebook the other day. From what I've asked my conservative friends, they don't actually like the insured until 26 part. Every single one of them told me passed the age of 21 they should have jobs that give them these benefits or they don't deserve them. The same goes for the pre-existing condition one. A couple of my conservative friends went far enough to say that this is a blatant abuse of power by the government power. The government should not have the power to tell the industry how it conducts itself. So I question the aptness of this cartoon... Now any reasonable person should support the points the cartoon brings up.
I don't like the mandatory coverage part. I think that is the main issue, the other laws will just make the premiums rise slightly.
Both laws will just make premiums go up. Cannot comment on the 26 year old because not sure if they have to be enrolled in school. the pre-existing condition law is to stop companies from denying claims that should be approved. The companies put this in to prevent people from never carrying insurance, getting sick then buying it. So if you support this you have to support mandatory coverage.
So not being able to find a job without health coverage means you don't deserve health coverage? And having a pre-existing condition means that for the rest of your life you will have to pay huge medical bills for basic coverage for you and your family? This is OK with you?
How would a mandate lower premiums? States already impose hc mandates, I've never heard it claimed this lowers premiums.
The whole point of a mandate is to lower premiums by including the low risk policies (which usually do not buy coverage) in with the high risk. Basic principal of insurance? Perhaps you can further explain how it raises premiums? We might be talking past each other.
I'm talking about mandates on insurance companies to take on more risk, by taking on dependents till 26 and pre-existing conditions. That raises premiums. You're talking about mandates on citizens to purchase a private product. Which might lower premiums sure, but not if you weren't paying anything before.
Except that not having insurance isn't the same as paying nothing since if something happens to them they get hit with a huge health bill. A friend of mine who works at a restaurant can't afford health insurance and hit her head on ice. The hospital wanted to do a cat scan but she declined it because she didn't have insurance. Her head hurt for days but she is ok. Imagine if she wasn't had had to go to the ER. How much more would that cost have been - all passed on to you through higher premiums, and her with a potentially crippling debt. To call the tax break a subsidy of business but when it comes from republicans to call it giving people their money back is just a type of duplicity which undermines everything you write as a rubber stamp partisan grunt. it worked, maybe you should just admit for once you are capable of being wrong. Give it up Mr. Beck.
