Chamber Continues to Monitor Health Care Reform and Keep Members Informed

On June 17th, the Dallas Regional 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.

Earlier that week, the Obama Administration released rules that limit the changes employers can make to their health insurance plans if they want to be excluded from certain provisions of the legislation. So naturally a number of questions stemmed from this subject of grandfathering regulation, especially when the Administration estimates that more than half of businesses will alter the coverage they currently hold and up to two-thirds of small business will do the same. In what ways can a health plan lose grandfathered status? Here are three: Raise deductibles/co-pays by more than the rate of medical inflation plus 15 percent, decrease cost sharing by more than five percent, or eliminate all benefits to diagnose or treat a particular condition.

A premium tax credit is 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. These are intended to help foster employee sponsored insurance plans and are only available for a limited amount of time. 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.

In other healthcare news, enrollment in the federal high-risk pool of insurance started on July 1st and coverage will begin on August 1st with money starting to flow to states that applied to run their own pools starting in the first of this month. Following Governor Perry’s direction, Texas has opted not to run its own high-risk pool pointing out that the state already has one in place.

The Dallas Regional Chamber will continue to stay on top of healthcare issues that affect the business community and inform members of developments. 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, it is the new home to Health and Human Services insurance web portal.