Obamacare Helps Employers Make Informed Health Insurance Decisions

Originally Posted 7th October 2013 by HCReform4SmallBiz

Obamacare launched this week and, not surprisingly, the dialogue is all about the President – did he create a Health Care Mess, or is he a Health Care Messiah?

This last view has been reinforced by the technology glitches that seem to have plagued the new online health exchanges in their early days.

But I think this dialogue (and, let’s be honest, sometimes in the current heated political environment dialogues turn to diatribes) misses the point.

The delay of Obamacare’s employer mandate for a year means that employers don’t have to immediately confront the dreaded and complex "pay-or-play" decision – either provide insurance for employees, or pay into a system to subsidize the uninsured worker. And that’s a good thing. Pay-or-Play was going to be a difficult decision for employers, because it just wasn’t clear how to Play.The delay gives employers time to do some research and take a hard (and more informed) look at Playing before they decide on Paying.

Today's Wallstreet journal article seems to argue that Obamacare might just be one of the few really good things that has come out of Washington for a while for small business.

I’m not taking sides in that Mess versus Messiah Debate I alluded to above. But, after talking to a number of employers, I do feel that Obamacare creates an opportunity for companies to examine some of the reasons they may have been reluctant to provide insurance in the past – the difficulty of knowing how to buy coverage; the difficulty of knowing what coverage would really be helpful and useful to workers; and the difficulty of knowing whether that coverage could be purchased affordably. And, if an employer ultimately does decide to provide insurance, Obamacare’s just-born health exchanges will have eliminated a great amount of the complexity and legwork for the company.

One employer I know is currently weighing his options thoughtfully. He runs a retail pet food store and has 300 employees. He’s committed to his employees, and he wants to provide them with insurance. But, as he began to sift through the data, he started to realize that the health exchanges in the state of Washington offer his employees automatic Medicaid, which is a great deal. So, maybe, he won’t provide insurance after all. Maybe he’ll re-deploy those dollars into an employee wellness program – or build a company gym. But at least he has the time to carefully reflect and assess before the Pay-or-Play decision stares him in the face.

I’ve been talking about employers here. Let’s talk about employees for a moment. Like employers, they can use this time to plug into the health exchanges and shop around a bit. That way, they can get a much better handle on costs and coverage, too. Despite the hiccups, I’m encouraged by what I’m seeing in the first stages of the Obamacare roll-out.

The Federal government surprised me by getting its act pretty much together; and, for their part, the states are managing well. As Americans, we should be happy that we have choice now. We’re in charge of our own destiny and our own decisions about health care. The big challenge in the coming weeks and months, though, will be settling everybody down and getting both employers and employees to do the math.

In the end, I think the numbers will probably add up.