by Pamela Powers Hannley
With full implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), January 2014 marks the beginning of a new era in health insurance in the US.
For the chronically uninsured and for those with pre-existing conditions, it's been a long and financially perilous wait for all of the ACA benefits to kick in.
For anti-government, conservative ideologues, the three-year waiting period gave them time to mercilessly attack reform that will provide insurance for millions of Americans, spread layers of misinformation about "Obamacare," hold dozens of meaningless repeal votes in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, and hold the country hostage for 16 days in a multi-million-dollar government shutdown fiasco.
Today, December 23, 2013 is the cut-off date for enrollment in ACA insurance plans which begin January 1, 2014; the final deadline for ACA enrollment is March 31, 2014. Since the beginning of December, I have been shopping the healthcare marketplace on behalf of the ultra-small business that I work for–The American Journal of Medicine. On Friday, I submitted our final paperwork to our insurance broker.
This is the story of one small business' route to "affordable" care.
Our Journey
Our journey began long before the premier of Healthcare.gov, the much-maligned ACA enrollment website, and even before the ACA was signed into law in 2010. At the Journal, we had been unhappy with our health insurance plan through Aetna for years. Like clockwork, the cost went up 10-25% each year, forcing us to rethink coverage multiple times in order to live within our budget. We also were dissatisfied with the limited number of even more expensive alternative plans offered to us. The Journal's editorial pages have been pushing for Medicare for all for years and broke the stories about medical bankruptcy in 2009 and continued medical bankruptcy under Romneycare in Massachusetts in 2011. Consequently, we were ready for the public option back in 2009; today, we're just glad that the ACA made it through the Republican gauntlet and the Supreme Court. Unlike recent news stories about people and small businesses wanting to keep their existing healthcare plans, we were waiting with baited breath for three years to dump our plan.
The bottomline is that with Obamacare, the Journal — and the emplopyees– will pay less for healthcare insurance. Read about our ACA Marketplace experiences and lessons learned after the jump.