The ball is rolling….October 1 and Health Care Reform is
here!
Sitting in an Arkansas BlueCross Blue Shield small
employer seminar a few weeks ago, the realization set in that the Affordable
Care Act (Obamacare) was being implemented and that the way businesses
currently buy health care insurance for either themselves or their employees
will forever be changed.
While I had been continually bombarded in the past few
years and more recently in the past two months with notices and rulings via
email along with numerous webinars and countless seminars regarding the
changes, it was sitting in a room filled with other small group plans and
hearing the questions and concerns that they were voicing that it finally hit
me: good, bad or otherwise, the ball was
rolling!
Whether or not you were pro or anti-Obamacare really
doesn’t matter. The bottom line is that
businesses need to get ready before January 1 and have a plan in place
regarding their employee (as well as their own) health care. There are so many pieces to this puzzle that
it would almost take someone with an advanced degree to figure out the
information, not the mention the amount of time spent reading, calculating
costs, and issuing health care notices regarding the state exchanges.
Having a grandfathered plan, my assumption was there
would be less paperwork involved with the health care law. That is not the case. There are still forms and individual notices
to be filled out (and filled out correctly or big fines will be given!). I can only imagine the paperwork involved
with a small business that has a large number of employees.
My words of advice to small businesses not knowing what
to do or where to turn would be to ask other businesses what they are doing and
if they are working with a corporate benefits company. The chamber has several members on our
website (www.rogerslowell.com) that
can help you make this transition as smooth as possible.
Something I have remembered from my business law class in
college...”ignorance of the law is no excuse.”
So get ready, because the ball is rolling and Health Care
Reform is here.
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