

What the healthcare bill means for small businesses - startuprules
http://blogs.reuters.com/small-business/2010/03/22/what-the-healthcare-bill-means-for-small-businesses/

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roboneal
Seriously, with no exclusions for pre-existing conditions, no raising of rates
if you get sick, and no lifetime maximums - how are "insurance" rates not
going to rise?

This smells like a "let's bankrupt all the private insurers" and then let
government swoop in and finally nationalize the rest of the healthcare system
to fill the void.

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icey
Theoretically the insurance rates won't rise because the healthy young people
who aren't buying insurance now will be forced to do so legally. With a lower
risk pool, the insurer would hopefully be able to keep rates stable.

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roboneal
How many healthy uninsured young people do you really think there is?

I hear 36 million total uninsured getting thrown around.

Let's say 15% are healthy, young, & gainfully employed (able to afford
premiums), but until now - health insurance "scofflaws".

Do you really think these 5.4M people offset uncapped, unrestricted benefits
of the other 300+ Million people?

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mike_organon
Change the rules and people will behave accordingly. The most obvious effect I
foresee is that employers who can't afford insurance will try to avoid growing
to have 50 employees. This isn't because the employer is evil, it's because
that one extra employee will cost salary + $40k in penalties, and probably get
him labelled as an exploiter of the working class. That should do wonders for
the economy.

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akeefer
It'll be interesting to see whether the negative impact of employers trying to
stay below 50 FTE employees is offset by the positive impact of people feeling
more free to start or join small businesses that don't yet offer health
coverage because they don't have to worry about pre-existing conditions when
obtaining individual coverage. It's not an obvious calculation either way.

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00joe
50 employees isn't that special of a number, because you also have to have 30
of those employees buy subsidized health insurance from the state marketplace.
Even then you only pay the 2k penalty for each person above that.

If you have 80 employees and 40 get the subsidy your total penalty is 20k. If
your annual payroll is $4,000,000, $50k per employee, this is .5% of your
payroll

