“Kvetching aside, Congress and the president have given us a health care bill,” said Maggie Moree, director of federal affairs for The Business Council of New York.
Moree came to Newburgh Feb. 16 to address more than 150 Orange County Chamber of Commerce members at a breakfast at the Ramada Inn.
“While Congress and the president did address what they set out to do ”“ trying to get more people covered ”“ what they did not do was show business how they could get their arms around the cost of this legislation,” said Moree.
New York already pays $4.1 billion a year in health care insurance and health care services, the No. 3 tax collected by the state. It is distributed through various channels, said Moree, the General Fund, Medicaid and Medicare among them.
If anyone expected premium relief would result from the federal health care bill, that”™s a misconception Moree quickly quashed. “Ultimately, business will see an effect on its bottom line,” she told chamber members.
Business owners, particularly those with 50 or more employees, she added, should start developing close and connected relationships with accountants and insurance brokers if they haven”™t already done so. “Having a dedicated person on staff to wade through and understand the plethora regulations the company must adhere to will also be a necessity under PPACA,” said Moree, referencing the Patient Protection and Care Act signed into law by President Obama last March.
One of the first of the new federal health care requirements was to offer coverage to employees who have adult children without alternative coverage under the age of 26. “Employers are going to have to make employees aware this coverage is available for their dependent adult children and to make sure that when their 26th birthday rolls around, they are no longer on the employee”™s health coverage. But then, there”™s ”˜mini-COBRA”™ coverage for those same adult children the state has in place that kicks in. Yes, it becomes quite a bit of record keeping for business.”
New York will have a particularly challenging time trying to incorporate the federal requirements into its own stack of health care benefits, because the new legislation is essentially creating a new layer of requirements the state already had in place.
The federal health care act provides for more preventive care and procedures. While the goal should, ostensibly, keep people healthier, “Someone is going to pay for them,” said Moree. “They are not free. At the end of the day, when Medicare and Medicaid are not paying for these services, it will ultimately become the cost of the private sector.”
Moree also told business owners that having two different plans ”“ one for hourly employees, another for management ”“ is not going to be acceptable going forward. “Because the government is just getting this program up and running, businesses do have time to come into compliance.”
There”™s more to come, and with a new Albany administration and a new budget to contend with, bringing New York”™s current health care in line with federal legislation is going to take time.
The bottom line? “Be on top of the changes,” said Moree, “because there will be penalties for those who don”™t comply.” Those changes will be coming regularly, leading up to 2014, when companies will have to look at pooling employees in health care exchanges.
Michelle Koury, chief operating officer for Crystal Run Healthcare in Middletown, said she appreciated the depth of understanding Moree had for the legislation and its effect on payments to providers and its cost to private employers and their employees. “For the health care providers, we need to have preventive services that are medically appropriate; but one of the questions being asked by peers is if these preventive services are having a positive effect on outcomes.”
Should employees get healthcare through employers or should employers help them get it through the state exchange? http://www.healthcaretownhall.com/?p=3416