Affordable Care Act

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According to this article from Politico, the cost of operating the health insurance exchanges, including the costs of providing subsidies to lower-income purchasers of coverage, will increase dramatically over prior estimates.  In part, this is because of the failure of some states to embrace the expansion of Medicaid.  The cost of Medicaid coverage is $3000…

[T]he bottom line of the health insurance/health care market is that it was too expensive for consumers and employers before the ACA; the ACA did not do anywhere near enough to reduce the costs, or even to slow the increase in costs; and this decision does nothing to control costs, and may contribute to increasing them.
Continue Reading Supreme Court Upholds Affordable Care Act’s Individual Mandate as a Tax, Invalidates Penalty of Loss of Medicaid Funds to States That Opt out of Expansion

If employers (especially small employers not subject to employer penalties) simply get out of the health care business without increasing their pay rates the anticipated offsets for higher income and payroll taxes simply will not occur and the deficit will increase.
Continue Reading New CBO JCT Analysis of Affordable Care Act’s Impact on Employer Provided Health Insurance

A new report issued by the Employee Benefit Research Institute shows that Health Savings Accounts (HSA’s) and Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRA’s) grew in popularity in 2011. Paul Fronstin, “Health Savings Accounts and Health Reimbursement Arrangements: Assets,
Account Balances, and Rollovers, 2006–2011,” EBRI Issue Brief, no. 367, January 2012.  The report shows that the number of…

The Internal Revenue Service had some activity this past week that employers should keep an eye on.  One was a new “Tax Gap” study, which analyzed the 2006 tax year. It found that overall compliance was statistically unchanged from 2001.  Initial compliance was slightly better, but within the statistical margin for error, while payment…

Last week, I was asked to write about our firm’s efforts to figure out what to do about our health insurance and health care program as we prepare for the effective date of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.  The result was published in the Washington Post here.  The bottom line is that…