Notwithstanding amendments to the SHOP by PACE (above), the state of Hawaii is moving forward with its own Affordable Care Act waiver application to the federal government. The Aloha State has had its own comprehensive health care law on the books since 1974. The Hawaii Prepaid Health Care Act requires that any employee who works…
Read More »March 23rd marked five-years since the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) became law and it has already had a significant impact on how employers offer health insurance coverage to employees. Employers with 50 or more full-time and full-time equivalent (FTE) employees are known as Applicable Large Employers (ALE) and are subject to the…
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A special enrollment period offered by the Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) as an inducement for small businesses to enroll in the Health Insurance Marketplace will end on Monday, December 15. The special enrollment period allows small businesses in many states the opportunity to avoid the so-called “minimum participation rate“, which in most states…
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We recall the disaster that was the Obama Care roll-out across the nation last year at this time as websites were crashing and Americans were being stripped of their health insurance (“If you like your health insurance, you can keep it!”), but Health & Human Services (HHS) projections paint a smaller but less problematic result…
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Notwithstanding that this is only the second year where the Obama Care exchanges are open for enrollment and despite the difficulties involved in year one enrollments (above), the New York Assembly will again be considering the adoption of a universal “single-payer” coverage model. Democrat state Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, representing Manhattan, has filed legislation proposing the…
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Speaking of the irony of some government mandates on business, we took note of another article this week, this one in the Washington Business Journal, reporting that the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) will be spending $840 million over the course of the next four years in order to help practicing medical doctors…
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As we get closer to January 2015 and the implementation of the employer mandate, we’re seeing more items surrounding the Affordable Care Act surfacing across the country. We remind our members that the effective date for the employer mandate, which had been delayed several times, is now January 1, 2015 meaning that employers with 100…
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Despite the fact it was passed into law over 4 years ago, different issues continue to surface with the Affordable Care Act – some foreseen, some not. The Business Journal reported this week that over 300,000 individuals are in jeopardy of losing their coverage across the nation for lack of sufficient documentation. The Centers for Medicare…
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Just a few days before the December 23 deadline, the Obama administration again unilaterally changed rules by allowing those individuals whose health insurance policies were cancelled to claim a hardship exemption and thereby skirt any penalties under the alleged law. This latest change was announced last Thursday evening in a bulletin from the Department of…
Read More »With most focused on the abysmal record of the ACA enrollment process thus far, we want members to know that the Department of the Treasury and the IRS have issued a notice modifying the longstanding “use it or lose it” for flexible spending arrangements. The new regulation allows for a carryover to the next year of…
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