Question

This is a Risk Management and Insurance Question!

Read:

• Employer Shared Responsibility Provisions (https://www.irs.gov/affordable-care-act/employers/employer-shared-responsibility-provisions)

Questions:

The Affordable Care Act requires employers with 50 or more full-time equivalent workers to offer affordable insurance to employees working 30 or more hours a week or face fines ranging from $2,000 to 3,000 per employee.

Question #1) From an employee’s perspective, what are advantages and disadvantages of having your employer mandated to offer health insurance to you?

Question #2) From an employer’s perspective, what are costs and benefits of having to offer health insurance to full-time workers? (You may discuss this from many different angles, including, but not limited to, total health care cost, employee productivity and loyalty, product price, product demand and competition).

Question #3) The federal government tries to shift the cost to private employers by requiring them to offer affordable coverage or else face a fine. In the meantime, the government offers subsidies to low-income people whose employers are not required to offer health insurance, or whose employer-sponsored health plans cost more than 9.5% of their income. The taxpayers are on the hook in the latter case. So a bigger question is: who should bear the cost of health insurance coverage?

Question #4) Do you think we should have a single-payer system (like in Canada where the government uses general tax revenue to finance health insurance) or multi-payer system with different parties sharing the cost together (like what we currently have, with the federal government, the state governments, employees and employers all involved)? Discuss at least two reasons to justify your opinion.

Answer 1

1. There are actually many advantages rather than disadvantages from an employee's perspective of having your employer mandate offering health insurance to you. Employers don't seem to be needed by law to supply advantages like insurance coverage, pension plans, and paid vacations. These forms of advantages are often quite pricey for tiny businesses, a minimum of initially look, therefore why do employers supply them? Since payroll is already the most important point on most employers' balance sheets, and recruiting new workers prices time and cash, you would like to form positive you're able to attract and retain the simple talent potential. this is often notably relevant in competitive fields wherever employees have multiple choices. Employers United Nations agency will afford to supply advantages typically have a wider choice of candidates from that to settle on. But little businesses should manage expenses and income with wisdom, therefore business house owners should approach these concerns cautiously and providentially. After all, nice advantages solely go thus far if the corporate spends more cash on them than it takes in. Also, employers United Nations agency supply advantages are also certain by sure laws and rules. no matter whether or not there are violations, employers usually got to pay advisers and attorneys to assist them produce profit plans that adjust to the law.
   
2. Offering insurance edges will provide you with a competitive worker recruiting advantage over different tiny businesses that don't provide coverage. It may conjointly facilitate sway proficient people United Nations agency might otherwise search out larger corporations that supply insurance. If your workers are glad with the coverage you give, it can even function an incentive for them to remain with you, reducing the prices of ratio. Offering insurance will give sure tax benefits for tiny businesses. for example, federal legislation enacted in 2010 enclosed the tiny Business Health Care step-down. per the White House web site, the credit could conceal to thirty five of AN employer's health-care premiums, increasing to fifty p.c as of 2014. To qualify, businesses should have but twenty five regular workers or the equivalent, like fifty half-time workers. Employers should conjointly pay average annual wages of but $50,000 and purchase a minimum of half their employees' health-care coverage. If your workers have access to health-care coverage, they will be additional probably to travel to the doctor after they aren't feeling well or bear regular preventative procedures like examinations for breast or glandular cancer. whereas journeys to the doctor may briefly have an effect on production if they occur on company time, they may have long-run positive effects on your business. AN affliction detected and treated in its early stages, for example, may stop a protracted absence thanks to a protracted recovery from a significant sickness. As a business owner, you furthermore might directly take pleasure in cluster health coverage, as you and your family can even elect to participate within the arrange. getting individual coverage is tough, significantly if you have got any pre-existing health conditions. as a result of teams permit insurers to unfold the chance among many people rather than one, cluster coverage is less complicated to get. Premiums are generally lower for insurance compared with individual coverage.
   
3. Employers should provide insurance that's reasonable and provides minimum worth to ninety fifth of their regular employees and their kids up to age twenty six, or be subject to penalties. this can be called the leader mandate. It applies to employers with 50* or additional regular staff, and/or regular equivalents (FTEs). Employees who work thirty or additional hours per week are thought of regular. Employers subject to the leader mandate are needed to supply coverage that has “minimum value” and is “affordable,” or be subject to penalties. From the time employers offer coverage through the final reporting forms submitted to the IRS, it is important that they maintain all documentation and records as proof of compliance with each aspect of the employer mandate. These documentation and records will be critical in the event the employer becomes subject to the Employer Shared Responsibility Payment (ESRP) assessment process.
   
4. Single-payer choices envision Medicare covering additional edges than it presently will. The Sanders bill, for instance, would amendment Medicare to hide vision, dental, and pharmaceuticals, likewise as long care services as nursing homes. it'd additionally cowl a large breadth of women’s procreative health services together with abortion, a feature that might doubtless draw arguing. There are versions of single money dealer i might favor to others, and though it's a story for one more day, i favor tons of the weather of the German and Swiss multi-payer systems for funding health care. My purpose here is that if you'reattempting to explain a direction for reform of the U.S.A. health care system, all $3.5 trillion of it, "single payer" is barely the start of a helpful description; so, it sidesteps several of the powerful choices that might still have to be compelled to be created.