Both Obamacare and Trumpcare affect you in different ways. They have a profound influence on health insurance, taxes for wealthy individuals who meet a certain threshold of income and Medicaid. For small business owners however, the most concerning the mandate in Obamacare which requires business owners with more than 50 employees to provide them with health insurance. Now this could be a painful, crippling requirement for most employers who simply don’t have the funds to hook up all their employees with an insurance plan.
On the contrary, Trumpcare, which Donald Trump describes as a “gift to the Democrats” actually helps smaller businesses that cannot afford to provide health insurance to their employees by repealing the mandate. However, this isn’t a good revelation for employees working under them. Around 49% of all Americans receive health insurance coverage from their employers –and if the new bill comes to pass – they might be forced to fend for themselves in the event of a catastrophic illness. Pharmaceutical companies are known for skyrocketing fees when it comes to rare diseases.
Are rare diseases covered?
Some health care plans involving rare diseases require up to hundreds of thousands of dollars per year. For instance, Myozyme, which provides a cure for Pompe, a rare and sometimes fatal disease can actually cost up to $300,000a year. Even well off Americans with a 6 figure income salary can find it impossible to provide the necessary funding for such rare diseases.
Obamacare offered a beacon of hope to poorer Americans afflicted with rare, crippling diseases by prohibiting insurance companies from charging more or even denying patients with preexisting illnesses. It was a silver lining that most Americans rushed to celebrate to. However, the American Health Care Act (AHCA) repealed the mandate by providing states with the option to get rid of the requirement entirely.
Controversial policy on taxes
The amount of taxes that Obamacare enacted was supposed to be a huge burden on wealthy Americans with annual incomes of over $250,000. Trumpcare will repeal these taxes, which would have amounted to more than $880 billion.
The burden on health insurance companies
Obamacare required insurance companies to provide a cover a minimum of health conditions and services, these included annual physical exams, prescription drugs, mental health counseling and counseling for substance abuse. According to Trumpcare, the health insurance market need not bother with meeting this ‘minimum’ threshold of services. This means that you will have to separately purchase these plans should you with to include them in your health plan.
Smaller business owners have dodged a bullet on this one
Both the bills however have their own share of people rooting for them. Americans seem to be divided along political lines rather than actually caring for the poorer uninsured Americans living below poverty lines. For small business owners that haven’t reached a stage where they make prosperous profits can rest easy knowing that the obligation upon them to provide their staff with health insurance no longer exists. However, if they want so succeed in the long run, it is of pertinent importance that they have at least some form of health insurance policy in place.
If you are having difficulty working out the proper insurance plan for your employees, get in touch with the professionals at JS Benefits Group to properly understand these terms which can be oftentimes confusing to the novice entrepreneur.
