Well, I’ve been in the Group Benefits, Employee Benefits business in San Jose for 13 years now. I have not spoken to very many people that find the Affordable Care Act….”affordable”. The joke in the industry is that its the UNaffordable Care Act. Even the biggest proponents are complaining that what they thought would be free healthcare, turned out to be something different. When Obama and the creators of the ACA had many ideas in mind, their main focus was to have everyone has access to health insurance. We could have done that in a few different ways.
Creative solutions for everyone to obtain Health Insurance that didn’t involve passing the ACA
The biggest part of the ACA was that everyone now has access to healthcare and health insurance. Why couldn’t we just pass a law that mandates all carriers to accept everyone, no matter what their health condition. The government could even subsidize the carriers when they bring on people that affect the risk pool. They could have even subsidized the public that can’t afford the insurance. Why did we have to pass a huge bill that affects the entire country to accomplish a few main points? No one seems to have a good answer to that
San Jose Health Insurance could have been kept much cheaper without the ACA
Before 2014, I could get someone fairly young, a policy for under $70 a month. Sure the plan had a huge deductible, but it’s fairly close to some of the Bronze coverage we have now. The absolute cheapest coverage now for someone young is about $150 or so…over twice the amount it was 2 years ago. So much for the Affordable Care Act. Now lets talk about the fantastic tax breaks for small businesses that were promised in the rollout of the ACA.
Tax credits for Small Businesses and the Affordable Care Act
First off….I always tell business owners that speak to me about this, to contact their CPA to see if they qualify. Many business owners call me and are excited about getting their tax breaks that Obama had been trumpeting during the ACA rollout. What happens in reality is that most owners are disappointed when their CPA informs them that do not qualify for the tax credits, for whatever reason. Remember the adage, if its too good to be true, it probably is? Well, this is a perfect example. To qualify for the tax credit, there is a narrow window for businesses to obtain those credits. To explain this would take up many paragraphs. The Unaffordable Care Act for most of us, is not so affordable. For myself, our Group Insurance policy has doubled from what it was about 18 months ago.