Pros And Cons Of Flexible Spending Account

Discuss some of the choices that an employee may make to help control health costs.

More and more people with medical insurance are relying on the health care system as new technologies and treatments become available. This leads to a grater number of claims for payment by insurance companies, the costs of which are passed back to health care consumers. The baby-boom generation is entering its peak health-care using period. Over eighty million Americans will turn 50 in the next 10 years. The cost of providing heath care for these individuals will be staggering

The Affordable Care Act is considered to be a landmark legislation that sought to bring changes to overhaul the health care system within the United States. While the ACA has brought necessary improvements and changes to how health care is handled, it has also directly affected many stakeholders within the health care industry. The major stakeholders of health care are considered to affect each and every aspect of the massive industry, and can be influential. This paper will be specifically addressing the effects of the ACA on the employer stakeholder group. It will talk about the new responsibilities and taxes employers must face, how the ACA is currently affecting employers at the moment and into the future, how the employees and their dependents will be affected by these changes, and finally what strategies employers can take to mitigate

Recently, a Consumer Driven Health Plan (CDHP), was created. There are many variables to a CDHP, such as benefits covered and coinsurance amounts, however there is one thing that all CDHP’s have in common – a high deductible. By having a high deductible, such as $1,200, it forces the plan participant to think about the medical services they are seeking. Do they really have to go to the emergency room for that cough or can they go to urgent care, or better yet, their physician the next day. When the plan

What’s next? Some experts say that if the consumer-directed approach doesn’t succeed, em wash their hands of health care altogether. A recent study by the Employee Benefit Researc showed that the proportion of U.S. residents covered by employment-based health benefits d percent in 2000 to 60 percent in 2004. Decades from now, observers may conclude that a counter- revolution in employer coverage began in these early years of the 21st century. —Terence F. Shea

Employers are continuing to face rising health benefit costs and are constantly looking for alternatives to control these escalating costs. Health benefit premiums continue to increase at a double digit pace for employers and employees (Poor, Ross & Tollen, 2004). This escalation is putting environmental pressures on all impacted stakeholders. Companies and insurance providers are squeezing this industry to get a handle on cost while still providing an appropriate level of care. This cycle puts the patient front and center as the ultimate stakeholder who incurs changes in health benefits. This mandate of cost control, efficient operations and market share has facilitated a constant analysis of the dynamic health

Regrettably, there is a downside of High Deductible Health Plans (HDHP), and that is the likelihood of higher expense later on if there is any cataclysmic medical issue with you or your family. With a High Deductible Health Insurance Plan, you run the risk of having higher out-of-pocket expenses. For example, a major medical issue warrant surgery, you would have to pay your deductible before the insurance company pays anything. This may cause you to forgo crucial health care needs; due to the high-deductible and out-of-pocket expenses you would occur. Lastly, if your monthly out-of-pocket expenses are high, this will enable you to have an advantageous use of your health savings account (HSA).

At last, the law gave new alternatives and motivating forces to help states rebalance their Medicaid long haul mind programs for group based administrations and backings as opposed to institutional care. All in all, these arrangements have quickened Medicaid advancement effectively in progress in numerous states. Also improved with the ACA besides Medicaid, is Medicare. The Affordable Care Act incorporates a progression of Medicare changes that will create billions of dollars in reserve funds for Medicare and fortify the care Medicare recipients get. The new law secures ensured benefits for all Medicare recipients, and gives new advantages and administrations to seniors on Medicare that will help keep seniors solid. The law likewise incorporates arrangements that will enhance the nature of care, create and advance new models of care conveyance, suitably value administrations, modernize our wellbeing framework, and battle waste, extortion, and mishandle. A big topic that is affected from ACA is businesses. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act -- otherwise known as Obamacare -- is putting such a small dent in the profits of U.S. companies that many refer to its impact as 'not material' or 'not significant. Even after a provision went into effect this year requiring companies with 50 or more full-time workers to provide coverage, and after more workers are choosing to enroll in existing company coverage because of another requirement that all Americans get

The Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare, was a major overhaul to the healthcare system, affecting both employers and employees. The ACA, along with rising healthcare costs, means employers have had to make changes in their healthcare plans and as a result, employees are seeing the affects, good or bad. As Fitzgerald (2014) points out, as the ACA gets closer to full implementation, more organizations will begin backing away from providing health care coverage. Part of the problem that organizations are facing in the future is the so-called Cadillac tax. As explained by healthaffairs.org (2013), the Cadillac tax is an excise tax on high-cost insurance plans and will mostly be paid for by the organizations. The tax, beginning in 2018, is a 40% excise tax on the cost of coverage for health plans that exceed a certain annual limit (healthaffairs.org, 2013). Because of this high tax, many companies are scaling back on coverage and finding ways to shift the cost to employees (Angle, 2014). The analysis presented will describe what ACA is, the problem GMFC faces, possible options, and finally, a solution for GMFC in this case.

This could be seen as immoral to some people of our culture because they want healthy citizens to enroll to get out of the debt that they have accumulated by opening up plans to people who already have preexisting conditions. Although people who just learned they will be facing significant health cost should not have the right to then go out and purchase health insurance because it is unfair to insurance companies that they have to cover extreme costs and untimely lose even more money from their company in the long

One thing these accounts all have in common is their very specific rules that are governed by IRS guidelines in Publications 502 & 969. Misuse of the accounts will lead to hefty penalties and other unfavorable tax ramifications. Each has specific eligible expenses and deviating from those strict guidelines is a recipe for a tax disaster.

Many employees must designate a health plan through their employer. These days, as HMOs (health maintenance organizations) and managed care plans continue to proliferate, that means a choice between bad and worse. As employees line up in the lunch-room for a process called open enrollment, they may be surprised to learn that managed care rates have gone up — again. The mirage that managed care is cheaper care is finally fading. And, for the first time in years, employees may also have the promise of free choice in medicine in the form of a new method of financing health care. Consumers are already aware of horror stories involving HMOs, but cheap rates persuaded many that managed care is less expensive. Recent

The higher cost of affordable Health care is also eroding the ease with which to afford other insurance that covers about 30 percent of Medicare enrollees ‘expenses. In 2005, about 89 percent of beneficiaries obtained such additional coverage, including through former employers (33 percent), medical policies (25 percent), Medicare advantage plans (13 percent), Medicaid (16 percent), or other programs (1 percent) (MedPAC). These supplemental insurance programs were all very helpful at the onset, but with the passage of time and as health care costs continued to rise, employers are finding it difficult to support these programs and as a consequence, a greater number of these employers are either reducing the benefit or eliminating these benefits especially those that affects their retirees thereby increasing the cost of these supplemental insurances.

| Pressure to save the money in your HSA might lead you to forgo care.

The Federal Employee Health benefit program is the largest employer health insurance program in the United States, insuring about 3 percent of all Americans. There are 133 plans, offering 188 coverage options that are participating in the FEHBP as of 2003. Preferred provider organization (PPO), fee-for-service plans, and Health Maintenance Organization (HMO) all offer options. The government’s contribution toward the cost of the beneficiary’s premium is “lesser of 72 percent of the average FEHBP plan premium, weighted by enrollment, or 75 percent of the premium for the plan chosen” (Karen Davis) .