Employer Sponsored Health Insurance

This paper discusses how the ACA has impacted the employer stakeholder group. Peer-reviewed journal articles will be examined to show how employers have been affected now and into the future, along with how employees are affected as well. Many mandates and changes have influenced and impacted employers in how they handle and deliver health care coverage, as well as impacting their business as well. Many changes affect large employers the most, but small to mid-size employers are also affected as well. This paper will also discuss commonly used strategies and their risks for employers to use in order to help lessen the impact of the ACA.

were already providing health insurance because we’re in a competitive market and that helps us to retain and recruit good employees,” the Sacramento-based small business owner said, . One benefit for small businesses are tax credits“For us it was just good business. But pretty quickly we saw that our firm could benefit from the law. What appealed to us about the ACA were the tax credits and other financial incentives” (Taylor, 3), “A tax credit is an amount of money a taxpayer is able to subtract from taxes owed to the government” (investopedia.com , 1). this is good because businesses that barely make any money don't have to pay much taxes and they can maybe get more popularity due to the money they are saving. This is one example of how the ACA helps Small Businesses since …“ObamaCare creates the Small Business Health Options Program or SHOP, a part of each State’s Health Insurance Marketplace, where small businesses with 50 full-time equivalent employees or fewer can shop for group health plans. Starting on November 15th, 2015 those with 100 full-timers or less can use the SHOP” (www.obamacarefacts.com ,2 ). Small businesses are not required to provide health insurance to their employees if they wish because “... the answer is no. Under the Affordable Care Act, businesses with fewer than 50 full-time equivalent employees are not required to provide health insurance to their employees, and those employers will not face tax penalties if they decide not to offer their employees health insurance” (resources.ehealthinsurance.com, 1).This is good that very small businesses have the freedom not to get insurance because some businesses need to save money because of the expensive previous health care. Despite it being affordable, ObamaCare has given the freedom for small businesses to not give healthcare to employees. “Since health insurance for small business isn’t mandatory under the ACA, small

High concentration in the market, as we all know, leads to market inefficiency, where insurers are able to set inadequate or unfairly discriminatory premium rates. Few oligopoly firms operating in the statewide markets are definitely to use market power for their advantages. These can be tightening barriers to entry what some of the US health insurers have been doing. For instance, large insurance companies like UnitedHealth Group, WellPoint and Aetna have been acquiring existing smaller health insurers without developing their own networks and products. These acquisitions tend to decrease competition and thus making insurance market more concentrated. On the other hand, there are more of the few ways of getting rid of competitors, one of them being through cost-efficiency. As far as Choi and Weiss (2005) concerned, cost-efficient firms are able to minimize cost and thus charge lower prices than competitors, which

Most of the uninsured go without health coverage because they can’t afford it, and they would purchase it if they could” (APHA, 2012). Because of the lack of medical doctors, the fees for medical treatments and preventions are extremely high, there are many people could not afford it. According to Jonathan Gruber, in the book Health Care Reform: What it is, Why it’s Necessary, How it Works, he mentioned that people who work in large companies will have their insurance covered, but for individuals who are working for small companies but earns more than those who can get Medicaid, will have to buy their own insurance. Usually these insurances are not cheap, and once they use the insurance once, the insurance companies will raise their insurance price or find ways to kick them out of the insurance coverage. In this case, ACA will “reduce premium costs for millions of working families and small businesses by providing hundreds of billions of dollars in tax relief …also reduces what families will have to pay for health care by capping out-of-pocket expenses and requiring preventive care to be fully covered without any out-of-pocket expense…Americans without insurance coverage will be able to choose the insurance coverage that works best for them in a new open, competitive insurance market… keeps insurance companies honest by setting clear rules that rein in the worst insurance

The Affordable Care Act was created to assure all Americans have access to affordable insurance, but as stated by Sir Isaac Newton for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction. As more and more people become insured in this country, the for-profit insurance companies are reaping the benefits from the legislation of the Affordable Care Act.

Once the law was enacted, more than 11 million Americans who were not insured enrolled into a health plan through the market place. In addition, it allowed 5 million Americans to stay on their parent’s health plan until the age of 25 and expanded the qualifications for Medicaid and Medicare. Low income families and individuals can also benefit from Obamacare by applying for federal subsidies, in which will lower the cost of premiums or cover the entirety, if they meet the requirements. With the immense increase in supply of health insurance and competition amongst insurance companies enabled premiums to be affordable amongst the general population. Reducing premium cost will not have an impact on the firm’s revenue as

The ACA requires insurers to accept all applicants, cover certain conditions, and charge the same rates despite one 's sex or pre-existing health status. There are ten provisions that make up the ACA which were to be implemented over time, from 2010 through 2020. The first provision is individual insurance, which prohibits insurers to deny coverage based on one 's pre existing health conditions. States were also required to make insurance available to children who are not insured through their families. Medicaid was also expanded to include individuals and families with an average income of thirty thousand dollars a year. This mandate will not cover those who are illegal immigrants, eligible individuals who choose to not be enrolled in medicaid, those who choose to pay the penalty, individuals whose insurance would cost more than 8% of their income, and those who live in states that opt out of the medicaid expansion.

When I was a young child my grandmother used to say, "things aren 't the same as they used to be." Much to my grandmothers disproval she is right, things are definitely not what they used to be. With the increase of the population around the world also comes the need for health care. This is a difficult problem especially in the United States where many people are not being covered by any type of insurance, leaving them stranded in terms of healthcare. Furthermore, the rich and the poor in many states will have access to coverage whether it is company health insurance or government-funded programs like Medicare. This leaves the biggest chunk of our population the middle class completely in a tough situation; my girlfriend is a great

price, quality, convenience, and superior products or services); however, competition can also be based on new technology and innovation. A key role of competition in health care is the potential to provide a mechanism for reducing health care costs. Competition generally eliminates inefficiencies that would otherwise yield high production costs, which are ultimately transferred to patients via high health service and delivery costs. With so much competition going on in the healthcare field and around the healthcare organization of my choosing, reducing cost for the patients will keep my organization in the competition for more patients to come

The health sector is among the most important sectors in the United States economy. The government has enacted certain laws that affect the corporation’s activities and the insurance industry in general. The regulation affects competition among the health insurance companies, and the insurance industry in general.

A competitive market is one that allows easy entry and exit: a market in which companies are generally free to enter or to leave at will. This does not describe the health care market in the US. There are certain assumptions that the competitive market model operates under some assumptions, first is the consumer/patient has full information about the nature of the services required, the anticipated results of their decision and the benefits obtain from the service. This is not true in health care often time the patient is operating at a distinct information disadvantage when they require health care services such as insurance. If a patient purchases health insurance often they don’t know enough information to ascertain if they have

There are many different forms of competition among health care organizations. Some of them are the prices of services, different co-pays someone will have to pay out of pocket, lower premiums, they have to be competitive in the quality of the service in which they perform daily. The health care competition is being advertised every day. The competitive nature of business cause them to reach out to the community. The health care industry has to fight for the approval of the community, the government, the insurance companies, the pharmaceutical companies and of course the stake holders as well as future investors.

Competition drives innovation and ultimately leads to the delivery of better healthcare. Competition has played a vital role in shaping the delivery of healthcare in the United States. Competition results in lower prices and broader access to health care and health insurance. Competition among and between hospitals and physicians intensified with the development of managed care organizations. In addition to putting pressure on costs, managed care plans have pressured providers to use shorter hospital stays and to offer alternative outpatient treatments (Botti, 2007). This led to lower costs and an increase in choice without sacrificing quality. Lower costs and improved efficiency has made health insurance more affordable and available. Another benefit of competition in health care is the innovation in healthcare technology (i.e. endoscopic surgery, anesthetic agents available in ambulatory surgery centers).

The growth of employees’ benefits occurred after World War Two during the first phase of the American Industrialization. The primary reason was to attract employees because of the shortage that World War two which created less available employees in the workforce industry. Another cause leading to benefits growth is the ability of companies with a large number of employees to purchase insurance at a lower cost than individual insurance. Benefits are considered a crucial component of an employee’s overall compensation and might include medical coverage, disability insurance, retirement benefits and investment options in the form of stock share or 401k. The government mandates US companies operating in US to offer obligatory benefits such as Social Security retirement benefits, workers compensation and unemployment insurance. The US health care reform was introduced initially during Harry Truman’s administration, and it was concentrated on the issues of coverage rather than the costs and the consequences. Only on March 23, 2010 the Affordable Care Act was signed into law by President Barack Obama. Under the health care reform every individual is obliged to get coverage through a health plan, Medicaid, or other public programs; otherwise a penalty will be applied. Americans will be able to check the rates and choose a plan online through the health insurance exchange program. Federal subsidies or reductions are available for individuals or families whose incomes fall

Health insurance can seem like a complex world sometimes, with a multitude of paths available to you. There are two ways to go about obtaining health insurance. You can enroll in group coverage or individual coverage. Before deciding which one of these would be most beneficial to your health circumstances, let’s inspect the two options.