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ACA Running Thread

Great moment on Hannity last night....His interview with Trump....

TRUMP: It is, by the way. It is unaffordable. And it doesn't work.

HANNITY: You can't even buy a catastrophic plan.

TRUMP: Correct. And the deductibles are so high that unless you get hit by a tractor, you're never going to be able to use it.

You might need to read it twice before you realize just how dumb this exchange was.
 
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The big winners in any GOP plan will be the insurance companies the big losers will be the public.

The absolutely worst concept for healthcare has been THE central concept to GOP plans -buying insurance across state lines. The insurance companies will move HQs to states with weak consumer protect laws just the credit card companies did. This will harm consumers dramatically and will end up in delays and likely deaths. Also. the big boys will come in and buy up smaller local insurers. There will be far less competition and prices will go up much faster.
 
Wrangor said:
They essentially dumped the program this renewal period by hiking the rates. We saw 400% increases from the previous year in many cases. Humana was charging 800 while the company we are now using was charging 120. It was crazy.

They can't make the numbers work.


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But you found a company for $120. That sounds pretty good.
 
Wrangor said:
They essentially dumped the program this renewal period by hiking the rates. We saw 400% increases from the previous year in many cases. Humana was charging 800 while the company we are now using was charging 120. It was crazy.

They can't make the numbers work.


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What company are you using now?
 
PhDeac said:
What company are you using now?
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Ambetter. Costs are ridiculously low. We do a program for our hourly earners that we will pay up to a certain point to cover their healthcare. They find the best plan on the open market, and they know that we cover 'X' amount. For 2/3rds of our employees we are now able to cover 100%, and the ones that we can't cover 100% usually have less than $100 / month of insurance premium expenses. Our advisor told us that we should at least be able to get 18 months out of this current plan, so we will see. Our employees went from extremely pissed off (because of Humana's rate increases) to really happy, so we are pretty pumped about that.
 
Wrangor said:
Ambetter. Costs are ridiculously low. We do a program for our hourly earners that we will pay up to a certain point to cover their healthcare. They find the best plan on the open market, and they know that we cover 'X' amount. For 2/3rds of our employees we are now able to cover 100%, and the ones that we can't cover 100% usually have less than $100 / month of insurance premium expenses. Our advisor told us that we should at least be able to get 18 months out of this current plan, so we will see. Our employees went from extremely pissed off (because of Humana's rate increases) to really happy, so we are pretty pumped about that.
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Sounds like Obamacare has worked remarkably well for you.
 
well yeah obamacare worked but the affordable care act didnt
 
Wrangor said:
Ambetter. Costs are ridiculously low. We do a program for our hourly earners that we will pay up to a certain point to cover their healthcare. They find the best plan on the open market, and they know that we cover 'X' amount. For 2/3rds of our employees we are now able to cover 100%, and the ones that we can't cover 100% usually have less than $100 / month of insurance premium expenses. Our advisor told us that we should at least be able to get 18 months out of this current plan, so we will see. Our employees went from extremely pissed off (because of Humana's rate increases) to really happy, so we are pretty pumped about that.
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Let me preface this by saying I know absolutely nothing about Obamacare, but I did come across this article today as I was trying to learn

Small Businesses Threatened With $36,500 IRS Fines For Helping Employees With Health Costs

http://www.forbes.com/sites/gracema...ing-employees-with-health-costs/#319039924a0e

Small businesses that reimburse employees for the cost of premiums for individual health insurance policies or pay their health costs directly will be fined up to $36,500 a year per employee under a new Internal Revenue Service regulation that takes effect July 1, 2015.
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So at a minimum I'd make sure someone knows what the heck these rules are
 
Yeah, Wrangor, palma is dead on here. If your company is reimbursing costs of employees to go out and get their own insurance, then that is considered a group plan and it isn't in conformity with the market reform requirements of Obamacare.

The real reason they are doing this is they don't want employers to use ACA to partially subsidize their health care costs.

You might be OK if you are including these costs in their compensation (after tax dollars).

There was an exception for 2% owners in an s-corp that would last at least 12/31/2015 or until the IRS put out further clarification which they never did.

Another issue is that one of Trump's EOs was to redact all penalties under ACA, so I am not sure how that would interplay.
 
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ChrisL68 said:
Yeah, Wrangor, palma is dead on here. If your company is reimbursing costs of employees to go out and get their own insurance, then that is considered a group plan and it isn't in conformity with the market reform requirements of Obamacare.

The real reason they are doing this is they don't want employers to use ACA to partially subsidize their health care costs.

You might be OK if you are including these costs in their compensation (after tax dollars).
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We are in compliance. Thanks for the heads up but because that is what we were doing before that ruling we had to modify. It is never a bad idea to reconfirm it but we are well aware of that fine and have no interest in exposing ourselves to it. We had a healthcare rep walk us through the process to ensure our compliance.


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FYI - checked on the health insurance reimbursement. As of December 13, 2016 Obama restored sec 105 health reimbursement arrangement for small employers. So what was once illegal is now legal for businesses under 50 employees ( which we are).

Thanks for the concern :). But we are not out of compliance. We just started this in January when we swapped from humana to ambetter. Very good adjustment to ACA before it dies.


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http://finance.yahoo.com/news/obamacare-flawed-heres-health-care-220305921.html

Obamacare has a "structural imbalance" that resulted in higher costs for healthier, younger people, Williams said, but lower costs for those who are "older and more likely to need care."

As a result, "Younger participants in the exchanges and who purchase individual insurance paid more and they just didn't see the value, and therefore they did not come forward and sign up," he said.

Williams said that because young adults chose not to sign up for ACA, the insurance industry is "missing their premiums and that's causing the overall rate of increase to be greater."

That, in turn, is helping "make the insurance pool unsustainable financially," he said.
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Unfortunately, this was entirely foreseeable and preventable, the Bz hire of legislation.
 
Wrangor said:
FYI - checked on the health insurance reimbursement. As of December 13, 2016 Obama restored sec 105 health reimbursement arrangement for small employers. So what was once illegal is now legal for businesses under 50 employees ( which we are).

Thanks for the concern :). But we are not out of compliance. We just started this in January when we swapped from humana to ambetter. Very good adjustment to ACA before it dies.


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This. Meant to post it this over the weekend but thus was a nice change that came in at year end. Of course, the Obama Administration could have just cleared it before but didnt.
 
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