ACA fun begins on Oct 1 (mines beginning already)

Mine remains the same, no insurance now, no insurance after Oct 1 and no insurance after Jan 1.

I am one of the "young" people who is going to screw ocare's projections all to heck. 

I obviously have issues with the ACA because I feel it's just pouring gas on the fire of our overpriced healthcare system versus actually reforming anything.  But nonetheless, it's kicking in next week so I'm really curious to what it means to everyone here.  Does it work out and make things cheaper, does it make things more expensive, does it effect your job, etc...

From my perspective I'm still in no mans land because I have no idea what we're doing next year.  I own a business that employs 8 people and I provide healthcare for all my peeps.  I have an HSA account with an individual deductible of $1500 and a family deductible of $3000 and then I contribute $250/mo. into each employees HSA account.  So not only is it free insurance for everyone, it is an extra bonus that everyone gets if they stay healthy and don't haev to use their HSA card.  For obvious reasons my employees absolutely LOVE our insurance and have virtually zero out of pocket costs all year. 

Even with that I still have 3 that opt out of the coverage due to their spouse getting coverage from their company in two cases and a third is covered by his parents plan still.  So, I have 5 covered people and I'm paying roughly $2000/mo. (some single, some with families) for their insurance and I'm paying $1250/mo. for their HSA contributions.  Total monthly cost to the business of $3250, or $39,000 per year.

The reason I went this route was because we had a PPO plan last year and my total out of pocket for the business was right around $3500/mo. and everyone still had to fork over a pretty hefty deductible on their PPO plans for anything outside of regular dr. visits.  My daughter had to have a procedure and it cost me almost $3500 out of pocket.  So, for me it was a no brainer.

So, a few months back United Health (our insurance provider) informs me that my plan is being discontinued because it is not in compliance with the ACA.  Apparently the deductibles were too high.
So, no matter what even though we all want to keep our existing insurance plan there's no question that is gone and I have to change.  I have yet to see what United Health is offering for next year so it may not ultimately be a big deal or it may be a really big deal.  The jury is still out.

The other piece that's becoming very frustrating for me is this.  I have an investor that helped me start my business.  He is a silent partner and has no involvement in my business whatsoever.  However, he owns another business that employs 40 people and approximately 20 of those people are part time college kids that work between 30 and 39 hours a week.  It's menial warehouse and bench testing type jobs so they're pretty low paying jobs.

His CFO calls me last week and informs me that they were just advised that due to my partner being an owner in both businesses his 50 employee count requiring full ACA compliance is based off the accumulated employees from all of his businesses.  In other words he's sitting at 48 employees counting his and mine.  They both informed me that I am on an immediate hiring freeze and that under no circumstances would they go over 50 employees because it would cost them upwards of $100k in additional benefits and would likely cost them that much or more in having to hire new consultants to do all of the necessary stuff to become fully compliant with the law.

To emphasize how bad this sucks, I have three openings right now at my business and had been interviewing candidates.  I have had to close all three of these positions and my current employees are very upset because of the workload.   My company is growing, I need to hire people, but I am now hamstrung by this new law.  This is not making me very happy right now.  I honestly have no idea what to do.

I'm also now dependent on my business partner to determine which way our benefits go.  He's talking about just throwing his employees out into the exchange which means I would have to do the same.  Due to his ownership in my business he has to be consistent.

So, I'm not trying to turn this into a bash the ACA thread, but I'm getting really nervous for my business.  The open positions (aka 3 jobs) are dead.  That's real.  I still don't know what will happen to our awesome medical benefits.  If I lose an employee because of this I'm going off the rails.

Sounds like it could be time to buy out that other partner.   It might be a good time to do so because he will be more motivated to get rid of you so that he can grow his business like he needs to, if he needs to.

Anyone that can call you up and tell you not to hire people that you need to hire... is NOT a "silent partner"

I'm no help on the ACA stuff. As an expat we get a 100% coverage insurance plan that I pay no money for.  I'm sure once I get back to the states I'll have my eyes opened as to what ACA has done for me.  Since my company is rather large (46,000 employees) I'm guessing that I'll still have my HSA+deductible, with lower deductibles. We'll see.

Easy, you hire 6 people instead of the three and you cut everyone back to 29 hours a week. The 50 full time employee thing is just to get you over the hump but you still are only obligated to provide insurance for full time employees. So even if you have 200 employees as long as you keep everyone below 29 hours you should be good to go, until they fix that part of course.

No worries, there are lots of jobs out there, if your employees start crying about not making ends meet on 29 hours a week tell them to go claim one of the many awesome, high paying, easy to get jobs that are out there.

I knew you were going to say that.

My "silent partner" in my first business was my buddy who did some database work.  We each got paid for the hours we we worked, and then we split the profit after that.   But the database work fell off, and we were just splitting all of the profits I earned!   I bought him out generously and we're still buddies.   WIN.

My "silent partner" in my(our) second business was our credit cards.   We paid them off in the first 4 months of operation and we've got great credit.  WIN.   Sold that business so we could buy our current house. 

Good luck on the buyout. Unless he's got some other leverage on you, If things get crappy between you during the buyout... I'd hire 2 more people.  Those 2 people will be HUGE for you, and he will be hamstrung on hiring.   ACA has created a "tragedy of the commons" between you, and you will get WAY more benefit from putting those 2 people into the "commons" than he would.   Dickly move to be sure... but you gotta feed your family.

I hope you just forgot the sarc font.

The end result of that type of short-sighted decision is nearly always lower morale, lower production, higher turnover, and in the end, even higher operating costs for the business.

I'm very curious to see how this all shakes out with Obamacare too.  My college age son and I are both on my wife's insurance through her employer (Commonwealth of PA).  I haven't heard anything about changes to that program.  Where it's going to be interesting for me is at the gym where I'm a full-time employee.  The gym has about 70 employees, of which, less than 10 are full time.  They don't provide any health coverage whatsoever.  By coincidence, I'm trying to hire another full time personal trainer right now, and had a fantastic candidate decline my offer two days ago because the lack of insurance was a deal breaker for her.  I'm hopeful that no matter how things work out, in the end I won't lose potential good hires over this issue anymore.

I hope you just forgot the sarc font.

The end result of that type of short-sighted decision is nearly always lower morale, lower production, higher turnover, and in the end, even higher operating costs for the business.

I'm very curious to see how this all shakes out with Obamacare too.  My college age son and I are both on my wife's insurance through her employer (Commonwealth of PA).  I haven't heard anything about changes to that program.  Where it's going to be interesting for me is at the gym where I'm a full-time employee.  The gym has about 70 employees, of which, less than 10 are full time.  They don't provide any health coverage whatsoever.  By coincidence, I'm trying to hire another full time personal trainer right now, and had a fantastic candidate decline my offer two days ago because the lack of insurance was a deal breaker for her.  I'm hopeful that no matter how things work out, in the end I won't lose potential good hires over this issue anymore.

Can you expound on that? Are you saying someone paid to get this bill passed? Who? Who does it benefit? Haven't heard that theory before so genuinely curious as to your take on it.

I don't know a lot about it, but lets just say there are a lot of people in the medical supply industry who REALLY wanted this to pass.  For some reason an extra 100M or so customers funded by government $ was appealing to them. 

Can you expound on that? Are you saying someone paid to get this bill passed? Who? Who does it benefit? Haven't heard that theory before so genuinely curious as to your take on it.

This sums up most of the debate I have heard on the subject, including by the politicians:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/man-who-understands-8-of-obamacare-vigorously-defe,34022/