If you are a company with a Group Health Plan in place, the rates are expected to increase significantly in 2019. Evidently, the increases are expected because of the Trump Administration stopping the Individual Mandate for people being required to purchase health insurance or face a “tax”. The thinking is that many of the healthy people will be leaving the insurance market, and all of the people with “issues” will stay, leaving a skewed risk pool. There are some ideas in place that the administration has spoken about such as, being able to purchase health insurance out of state, and purchasing limited benefit plans. Limited plans may be a good alternative for people not needing the maternity benefit and pre-existing coverage.
Limited Health Insurance plans may be making an appearance in 2019
For some time now, there has been talk about bringing health insurance plans into the marketplace that have limited coverage. This proposed coverage could be from an insurance company in another state and create competition in the CA industry. There are some drawbacks. Again, some opponents think that the sick people, pregnant women, and high utilization folks will stay on the more comprehensive coverage. If that’s true, we may see a bit of a skewed risk pool. To counteract that, the Trump Administration has proposed subsidies for insurance companies to offset the difference between what they would be losing, and keeping the “win’ for the individual insurance purchaser
No clear answers and no one knows if it will work
I’m not a total fan of ObamaCare, but it has done some good. More people are covered, with better coverage. The problem is that the ACA did nothing to address the COST of healthcare, which is the root cause for the high insurance prices. Group Health Insurance is expensive, because healthcare is expensive….its that simple. No one likes the sleazy tactics of some insurance companies, and believe me, I’ve seen some. ACA was “insurance reform”….that’s it. Not that we didn’t need it, but we still have the cost issue to deal with. Single Payer is not the answer, and its been proven time and time again. Have you ever heard, “if you think its expensive now, wait til its free”? That pretty much sums it up.
Bottom line, business owners, find a good Group Benefits agent and stick with them. Brauer Insurance exists for that one reason….to be a resource to companies with under 100 employees. We Protect and Serve. www.brauerinsurance.com (877) 421-4325