If you’ve been following the news, or our considerably more pithy reportage, the original plan of the both maligned and anticipated (depending on who you are) Affordable Care Act required the U.S. government to create onsite marketplace exchanges for affordable insurance plans that small businesses could buy to defray the astronomical costs of employee healthcare insurance. This was supposed to take effect at the beginning of this year. Supposed to. It didn’t.
The government ran into “operational challenges” (no health pun intended). So, it gave itself an extension to fulfill the health exchange component of the Affordable Care Act until 2015. Feel free to read all about it here.
While delays are understandable, this one is particularly frustrating because the competitive exchanges were a huge selling point of the Affordable Care Act and one of the main reasons it was passed in the first place. Small businesses actually often pay higher premiums for health care than large employers because bigger businesses have greater negotiating power with insurance companies than their smaller but equally bottom-line-oriented compatriots.
Oh, well. Pass out multivitamins and focus on health and wellness for now!
This blog is presented under protest by the law firm of Ervin Cohen & Jessup LLP. It is essentially the random thoughts and opinions of someone who lives in the trenches of the war that often is employment law–he/she may well be a little shell-shocked. So if you are thinking “woohoo, I just landed some free legal advice that will fix all my problems!”, think again. This is commentary people, a sketchy overview of some current legal issue with a dose of humor, but commentary nonetheless; as if Dennis Miller were a lawyer…and still mildly amusing. No legal advice here; you would have to pay real US currency for that (unless you are my mom, and even then there are limits). But feel free to contact us with your questions and comments—who knows, we might even answer you. And if you want to spread this stuff around, feel free to do so, but please keep it in its present form (‘cause you can’t mess with this kind of poetry). Big news: Copyright 2013. All rights reserved; yep, all of them.
If you have any questions regarding this blog or your life in general, contact Kelly O. Scott, Esq. (who else would you contact?), commander in chief of this blog and Head Honcho (official legal title) of ECJ’s Employment Law Department, at (310) 281-6348 or kscott@ecjlaw.com.
