Business Insurance Opinions                 March 28, 2011

THE HEALTH CARE REFORM law’s one-year anniversary, which was last week, is an appropriate time to reflect on the statute.

There are many provisions—extending coverage to employees’ adult children, eliminating pre-existing medical condition exclusions and extending federal health insurance premium subsidies to the lower-income uninsured—that enjoy widespread support and are in the national interest.

The same cannot be said for several other provisions, especially the individual mandate, the legality of which is being challenged in numerous lawsuits and, to a lesser extent, the employer mandate.

At this juncture, there is a word that perhaps best describes how we and many others feel about the law: uncertain.

No one knows how the legal challenges will turn out, as well as whether employers, especially midsize organizations, will keep their health care plans or fold them because it may be financially advantageous to do so.

There also is uncertainty about what may be the biggest issues of all: Whether states will have the wherewithal to set up and administer insurance exchanges and whether the various tax increases laid out in the law will adequately fund the extension of subsidized coverage to tens of millions of previously uninsured U.S. residents.

In the meantime, we think the best action for employers is to continue to do what they have been rigorously doing during the past 12 months: Master the key details of the law and redesign their plans to comply with the law and to best meet corporate and employee needs.

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This entry was posted by cmonfils on Wednesday, March 30th, 2011 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Health Care Legislation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.