respond to this discussion: The Supreme Court upheld most of the Affordable Care Act in 2012. The implementation of the Act has gotten off to a rough start. Locate and summarize an article about the impact of the Affordable Care Act on businesses or employee health insurance.

 

 

 

There are two examples:

 

1- The impact of the Affordable Care Act on businesses or employee health insurance has been a controversial topic. In Bresiger’s article, he discussed a survey conducted by the International Foundation of Employee Benefits Plans on small to medium-sized businesses that believe the Affordable Care Act has caused a negative effect on their businesses. Smaller employers with 50 or less employees state they are being affected much harder because health insurance coverage has increased at a rapid pace. Some employers also shared they began reducing some full-time employee hours, frozen or reduced pay raises and compensation, and cutback on hiring to keep staff. In my organization which is a larger business entity has slightly benefited from the ACA since we are a local health department. The ACA was offered to uninsured patients that did not qualify for any other healthcare benefits and needed medical assistance.

Reference:

Bresiger, G. (2014, July 05). Bosses bash Affordable Care Act: report.                                               

 

2- The article published by Forbes, states that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is not as bad as many people make it seem and have protested about. The biggest issue that people had with ACA is that they believe it will cause a financial hardship on small businesses. The ACA mandates employers to provide health insurance to full time employees only if their business has more than 50 employees. Businesses that have less than 50 employees which is about 96% of businesses in the United States are not required to provide health insurance. If these businesses decided to provide health insurance, the Act provides a tax credit to help offset the cost. If businesses that have less than 50 employees choose not provide insurance than employees have the option to purchase their own coverage through the health insurance exchange. As for businesses that have more than 50 employees, employers are required to provide health insurance to full time employees. At the time of the article only 0.2 percent of these businesses did not provide health insurance. The Act has provisions to make health insurance affordable for many of these businesses. If a business decides not to follow the mandate they will receive a penalty. The penalty falls into two different scenarios: one for not providing healthcare coverage and the second for not providing affordable healthcare coverage. The penalty for not providing healthcare is $2,000 per year for each full time employee minus 30. When it comes to the penalty of not providing affordable healthcare, under the stipulation if any employee has to pay more than 9.5% of their income for the employer’s coverage than the coverage is not considered affordable and the business will be penalized.

 References

Is The Affordable Care Act Really Bad For Business? (2013). Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2013/04/22/is-the-affordable-care-act-