Eric deBoer, owner of Marquesa Hotel and Manley/deBoer Lumber, found unexpected issues when weighing the benefits of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, for his employees.
“Some of the things I found out were very surprising,” deBoer told KonkLife. “When I hear other people talking about Obamacare, I’m not sure people really understand the issues.”
deBoer, whose brother, Guy, publishes KonkLife, spoke only of what he saw as drawbacks and benefits of the plan and not about the flammable politics surrounding the issue.
According to deBoer, the new health care regime has more problems than the failure of Healthcare.gov to handle the barrage of online applications.
“My great worry about Obamacare is that it won’t greatly increase the number of people who are insured, but it will significantly raise the rates of people who do have insurance,” he said.
Employers and employees must decide whether to continue with company health insurance or move to Obamacare. The ACA lets workers go to the health insurance marketplace via online exchanges. By keying in one’s name, age, and income, one is presented with various levels of insurance, prices, and government subsidies to help pay the premiums for which one signs up.
Decision is either- or
“If your employer offers health insurance than you are allowed to go to the exchanges and seek an insurer and insurance policy that best meets your needs or you can keep your employers insurance,” deBoer said. “When you do go to the exchange, if you currently have insurance through your employer, the first step is to determine which insurance plans offered through the exchange best meet your needs and budget. Then if your employer offers you insurance, how does that plan compare to what you selected through the exchange. Some employers provide health insurance as a benefit, but today it’s so expensive, most employees pay a portion and an employee can choose to participate with the employer’s health insurance, depending how much the employer is covering.
Subsidies for Obamacare only
“With Obamacare, if an employer offers health care, the employer must pay 50 percent and the employee pays 50 percent.
“Or you can go out into the private health insurance market place–separate from Obamacare– like you used to be able to, but you can’t shop for that same health insurance on the exchanges under Obamacare.”
“The primary reason appears to me to be is the Obamacare exchanges offer subsidies,” deBoer said. “But if your employer offers you health insurance, the new law excludes employees from getting a subsidy.”
Uneven pricing for health policies
The new law does not apply policy prices evenly; whereas employees who get their health insurance at work pay the same as other employees, deBoer found.
“This uncovered a basic unfairness that I’ve been wrestling with,” he said. “The exchanges price health insurance policies based on your age. Health insurance for young people is cheaper, and for the old it’s quite expensive.
“In traditional company plans, the insurance companies average out the age of your employees, so it’s the same price per person; it’s the same if you are 22 years old or 62 years old,” deBoer said.
The costs also vary by county, he said. Dade County residents pay much less than Monroe County residents.
Employees: Pre-tax dollars
“Another big thing that’s not talked about very much: On the exchange, you buy insurance with after-tax dollars, but employer health insurance is bought with pre-tax dollars.” Health insurance premiums are deducted from employee pay before taxes, so the employee only pays tax on the rest of his pay. It represents a small saving for the worker, but nationwide, it means billions of dollars in savings.
It also means one has to work longer to earn enough to pay the Obamacare monthly premium.
“If you have policy that costs $300 a month, you have to earn $360 so your after-tax is $300 and you can buy the insurance,” deBoer said.
After weighing the pros and cons of the ACA, deBoer said he’ll continue to offer health insurance to his employees.
“We’ll keep the company plan for at least one more year,” he said.
Deboer reveals an unexpected surprise. The Healthcare.gov website, which has reportedly failed for millions of Americans who have given up trying to sign on to it?
“In my experience the website worked just fine,” he said.
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Obamacare critics fearful of the federal government controlling one-sixth of the nation’s economy and the resulting loss of freedom have missed both the most serious threat to freedom and its likeliest victims. Obamacare stands to turn millions of our neighbors into criminals. That’s because seeking a subsidy in order to obey the mandate of — never mind afford — the Affordable Care Act (“ACA,” but referred universally as Obamacare)1 can easily put our most economically and educationally vulnerable fellow citizens on a path to jail. If this be compassion, it is true only in the same sense that euthanasia fulfills the definition.