“The Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration found that, by May, roughly 228,000 taxpayers had claimed the small-business credit to the tune of more than $278 million. The IRS had previously tried to reach out to some 4.4 million taxpayers that it thought could have been eligible for the credit, and the Congressional Budget Office had estimated that up to $2 billion could be claimed for 2010.”
“The 2010 healthcare law contains a tax on the health insurance policies that most small businesses purchase… Estimates predict the tax will raise the cost of employer-sponsored insurance by 2% – 3%, imposing a cumulative cost of nearly $5,000 per family by 2020. The NFIB Research Foundation’s BSIM model suggests that such price increases will reduce private sector employment by 125,000 to 249,000 jobs in 2021, with 59 percent of those losses falling on small business.”
“A new technical analysis by Oliver Wyman estimates that the new health insurance tax in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) ‘will increase premiums in the insured market on average by 1.9% to 2.3% in 2014,’ and by 2023 ‘will increase premiums 2.8% to 3.7%.'”
“We’re economists, not political consultants, so we offer no unique insight on whether the administration’s proposed rule will hold in the face of political pressure. But we do know that this unpopular definition and its possible revision hold significant implications for everyone impacted by this law’s provisions. Either millions of dependent families of employees will be stuck without an offer of affordable coverage-or taxpayers will be stuck with significantly more subsidy costs than originally projected.”
“A $5 billion fund created as part of the health-care overhaul to pay for health insurance for early retirees will run out of money by September 2012, according to a federal report released Monday… The money was supposed to be available through the end of 2013.”
“Hard times continue for the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. Obamacare). The administration has scrapped the law’s long-term care insurance program covering nursing homes and home health care. The program was deemed unrealistic. This is a harbinger. As the law is implemented — assuming the Supreme Court doesn’t declare it unconstitutional or Republicans don’t repeal it — disappointments will mount.”
“Overall, PPACA is anticipated to increase costs by an average of 1.5% in 2011 across the surveyed health plans. Other surveys have offered similar cost estimates. However, it is important to understand that these averages cannot be easily extrapolated to any particular health insurance policy or across different lines of business… Overall, for 2011 health plans reported estimated increases due to PPACA of 4.7% for individual policies, 1.5% for small group plans, and 0.8% for large group plans on a weighted average basis. These impacts are additive to the other trend components discussed previously.”
“Staffing firms urged Congress Thursday to repeal the healthcare law’s requirement that employers provide insurance for their workers — even as they continue working with federal regulators to tweak the law.”
“Prudent insurers, employers and benefits advisors should take the same ‘better safe than sorry approach to planning for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that they’d take to planning for computer problems, or a major hurricane.”
“The International Franchise Association, a lobbying group that has long expressed concerns about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, released a study this month claiming that franchise businesses will be discouraged from growing and hiring in 2014, when new health-care mandates are scheduled to kick in. The report estimates that the law will negatively affect ‘tens of thousands’ of franchises. It will allegedly impose more than $6.4 billion in increased costs, not including expenses associated with regulatory compliance, and will impact some 3.2 million full-time employees who work for franchise businesses.”