Last week, the Chamber hosted a meeting on health reform specifically geared towards small employers and what they need to do to prepare for changes due to health reform. Two experts, Steve Cagle of McQueary Henry Bowles Troy and Gary Short of Jones Day, took a timeline approach to explaining what businesses need to do to prepare and adapt to changes in the law.
A majority of the conversation focused on what changes will go into effect in 2010 (since the reform was so large and encompassing it takes a while to get through it!) and then answered audience questions along the way. DRC is working on having webinars at least once a quarter that will continue to address healthcare reform and will try to walk employers through changes each step along the way.
2014 is when most of the new regulations and overhaul will get moving and that is the big year that everyone will see the most changes. So, naturally our experts touched on a couple of items that will occur that year, including penalties faced if employers do not offer a health plan. This will be a large focal point for many of the seminars and informationals you see advertised – and for good reason.
A couple of items discussed during the meeting were: Premium tax credits are already in effect for small employers that wish to utilize it. The credit is up to 35 percent of the employer’s contribution to provide health insurance for employees. Businesses utilizing the credit in turn lose a correlation tax deduction, and, as meeting participants were warned, a company needs to run the numbers and see which makes more sense. The IRS has published facts about the tax credit and answered numerous common questions at www.IRS.gov.
Wellness programs and individual responsibility for one’s own health were stressed during the meeting. True reform and changes to the system will come once individuals start taking better care of themselves by eating right, exercising, and practicing preventative medicine. Health reform does codify and improve upon the HIPAA wellness program rules and increases the value of workplace wellness incentives to 30% of premiums (with potential to go up to 50%). At this point, we would be remiss if we didn’t mention the Live Healthy North Texas wellness program that the Chamber fully supports and participates in yearly. More information can be found at www.livehealthynorthtexas.org.
With the Administration releasing new regulations and rules intended to help employers keep their current plans in place, grandfathering was is a big current issue. Grandfathered plans are not exempt from all required reforms and there are several ways you can lose this status. Just a couple include: eliminating all or substantially all benefits to diagnose or treat a particular condition, increase co-payments by more than medical inflation rate plus 15%, or decrease annual or lifetime dollar limits on coverage.
Thank you again to our presenters Gary Short and Steve Cagle, along with everyone that attended. If you were not able to make it to the meeting, then we are sorry we missed you but please look for future events. If you would like to see a certain subject addressed or an event take place, please write us with your suggestions at healthcare@dallaschamber.org.
Also be sure to check out www.healthcare.gov in the coming weeks, it will be home to Health and Human Services new insurance web portal.
