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Thread: ObamaCare Hits Small Business Hard in Gloomy '15

  1. #1

    ObamaCare Hits Small Business Hard in Gloomy '15

    Red Tape: With businesses' one-year reprieve from financial penalties under ObamaCare ending, the horror stories of complying with the costly health care law already are trickling in. The worst is yet to come.

    ObamaCare Hits Small Business Hard in '15

    Starting Jan. 1, employers with 100 or more full-time workers face hefty increases in their health insurance costs as they comply for the first time with the mandate.

    They must now offer the government's comprehensive coverage — including "free" preventive care — for all employees working 30 or more hours a week, or risk being fined $2,000 per employee per year.

    But many of these small businesses are retailers that don't have the kind of margins where they can cover workers and still stay in business.

    Many grocers and restaurants have opted to pay the fine rather than swallow the larger cost of buying coverage for all workers. Others are cutting back worker hours to duck the law altogether.

    Universal health care is hardly "free," and its costs hit both employees and customers hard. Service companies — including even garbage collectors — are passing on the added cost to customers in the form of higher bills.

    Take God Bless the USA, a trash collection company outside Charlotte, N.C. It recently notified customers that it's raising prices 5% to help cover expenses.

    "Due to the Affordable Care Act, effective Jan. 1, 2015, we are obligated to provide health care coverage to all of our employees," it explained in a Dec. 5 letter. "Unfortunately, we are unable to internalize this cost and are sorry we have to pass this cost on to you."

    Requirements under ObamaCare tighten in 2016, when smaller firms employing 50 to 99 full-time workers also have to offer coverage or face fines.

    A few small businesses in Michigan that did offer employee-sponsored health coverage are now preparing to stop next year, says Michigan Group Benefits, an East Lansing-based insurance agency.

    Why? Sticker shock from the pricier ACA-compliant policies, which provide everything from "free" mammograms to colonoscopies.

    Blue Cross Blue Shield and other insurers have stopped allowing businesses to renew policies that aren't compliant with ObamaCare. In their place, they're offering plans with 14% to 45% rate increases, the National Association of Health Underwriters says.

    Though employers with fewer than 50 workers are exempt from mandates, they too are feeling ObamaCare's pain.

    Kaiser Permanente already has sent cancellation letters to such employers, explaining that their existing plans don't offer ObamaCare's richer benefits and therefore are no longer available.

    Some two-thirds of the 31 million employees who work for such firms and get health insurance from them could receive similar cancellation notices over the next year.

    When the president signed ObamaCare in 2010, he promised it would "lower costs for families and for businesses." As it turns out, neither is true.
    Read More At Investor's Business Daily: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editor...#ixzz3NPu88yfE
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  3. #2
    And while liberals rail mindlessly an endlessly about big corporations, they will tell you in the very next breath that any business with margins so low they cannot afford those costs does not deserve to survive.

    But have no fear. The GOP will fix it all when we elect one president, right? Ha ha ha ha ha!
    Last edited by angelatc; 12-31-2014 at 11:51 AM.

  4. #3
    Not only that, we had to have a paid day off from producing to have a GD medical insurance meeting because BBFMS made it even more complicated.

    Yeah, Angela. The Rs went from repealing O'care to saving it quicker than I thought! That's what modern conservatives do now. They "conserve" all of the left's "accomplishments."
    Based on the idea of natural rights, government secures those rights to the individual by strictly negative intervention, making justice costless and easy of access; and beyond that it does not go. The State, on the other hand, both in its genesis and by its primary intention, is purely anti-social. It is not based on the idea of natural rights, but on the idea that the individual has no rights except those that the State may provisionally grant him. It has always made justice costly and difficult of access, and has invariably held itself above justice and common morality whenever it could advantage itself by so doing.
    --Albert J. Nock

  5. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by Lucille View Post
    That's what modern conservatives do now. They "conserve" all of the left's "accomplishments."
    Get a rope!

  6. #5
    Yup, this will put people back to work.... Oh, that was never the plan to begin with?
    1776 > 1984

    The FAILURE of the United States Government to operate and maintain an
    Honest Money System , which frees the ordinary man from the clutches of the money manipulators, is the single largest contributing factor to the World's current Economic Crisis.

    The Elimination of Privacy is the Architecture of Genocide

    Belief, Money, and Violence are the three ways all people are controlled

    Quote Originally Posted by Zippyjuan View Post
    Our central bank is not privately owned.

  7. #6
    When the president signed ObamaCare in 2010, he promised it would "lower costs for families and for businesses." As it turns out, neither is true.
    not really. my family's coverage cost is way, way up.
    "IF GOD DIDN'T WANT TO HELP AMERICA, THEN WE WOULD HAVE Hillary Clinton"!!
    "let them search you,touch you,violate your Rights,just don't be a dick!"~ cdc482
    "For Wales. Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. But for Wales?"
    All my life I've been at the mercy of men just following orders... Never again!~Erik Lehnsherr
    There's nothing wrong with stopping people randomly, especially near bars, restaurants etc.~Velho

  8. #7
    Obamacare is finally hitting employers

    Companies with more than 100 full-time workers must offer affordable health insurance to at least 70% of their staff. This "employer mandate" was supposed to take effect in 2014, but the Obama administration delayed it to this year.

    And those that don't comply face hefty penalties.

    Companies will be fined if they don't offer coverage and even just one of their workers gets subsidized insurance on an Obamacare individual exchange. For 2015, the fine is $174 a month times the number of full-time employees (minus 80 workers).

    But that penalty is higher if the company offers insurance, but it's not considered affordable or comprehensive. In that case, the employer pays $261 a month for each employee who received subsidized coverage on an individual exchange.

    Employer insurance offerings now have to pass two tests.

    To be affordable, the plan's premiums can't cost a worker more than 9.56% of his income. This applies only to employee-only coverage since the health reform law does not consider the affordability of family coverage.

    To be comprehensive, the policy must pay for at least 60% of the staff''s collective medical expenses and cover an array of essential health benefits, such as prescriptions and maternity care.

    Some 94% percent of firms with 100 or more employees offered health benefits to at least some of their employees in 2014, according to the Kaiser/HRET Employer Health Benefits Survey.

    But many, particularly companies with more low-wage workers, will have to make some changes to meet the Obamacare standards.

    "Almost all large employers are having to tweak their benefits somewhat," said Larry Levitt, senior vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation.

    While not every employee opts to get insurance through their jobs, more are likely to sign up because they will have to pay a penalty if they remain uninsured. In 2015, those without insurance will pay the larger of $325 or 2% of income.

    The burden becomes more onerous in 2016, when larger firms have to offer coverage to 95% of workers. That's also when the mandate kicks in for mid-sized businesses, with 50-99 employees.

    Companies with fewer than 50 people on staff, which make up virtually all businesses, are not subject to the requirement.

    Only 2% of the nation's firms are considered large, with another 2% defined as mid-sized.

    A full-time employee is one who works at least 30 hours a week.
    http://money.cnn.com/2015/01/02/news...l?iid=obinsite



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