Do you See A Trend Here? Group Dumping is Rearing it's Ugly Head

Health Benefits US Inc is seeing a trend in our market areas of North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Georgia and Florida.  

We wrote about this back in September, you can read that article in full here. 

The trend is not going away. The question is - "What do you have as your solution - whether you are on the agent or consumer end of the deal?"

Empire Blue Cross/Blue Shield to Dump Most NY Small Group Plans
reposted from November 4, 2011

By Lonely Conservative Comments are off for this post

The worst aspects of Obamacare haven’t reared their ugly heads yet (the Democrats did that on purpose – they wanted to put off the pain until after the 2012 election) but here’s a preview of what’s to come. In New York, Empire Blue Cross/Blue Shield has confirmed that they will be dumping most of their small group health insurance plans.

Empire Blue Cross Blue Shield, the largest health insurer in the region, announced to health insurance brokers on Friday that it will eliminate most of its small group plans in the New York market effective April 1, 2012, and is slashing its financial incentives for brokers to sell those products—a move one industry insider has said would be “catastrophic” for the insurance marketplace.

In a statement, Empire said it will reduce the number of plans offered to small groups and will offer fewer PPO, HMO and EPO plans, but claimed it has no intention of withdrawing from the market—a point with which brokers disagree.

New York has a plethora of mandates that have driven up the cost of health insurance. Get ready for this on a national scale.

Eventually, this will lead to health insurers going out of business and the government taking over. Then all of those mandates will disappear and the rationing will begin. We’ll all be on Medicaid.

Are You Eligible for the Small Business Health Inusrance Tax Credit?

Somebody asked me the other day if the new law (well, it's not that new anymore...2010) will require small businesses to provide insurance. No, it won't.  But what a business owner needs to know is that the 'new law' will provide such businesses with tax credits if they choose to provide insurance to their employees.  

The tax credit is designed to both support those small businesses that provide coverage today as well as those that newly offer such coverage.  

That's big.

Effective January 1, 2010, tax credits became available to qualifying small businesses that offer health insurance to their employees. So if your business qualifies for a tax credit, you are eligible right now. 

About 4 million small businesses will be eligible to receive tax credits if they provide insurance.

The tax credit is worth up to 35 percent of the premiums your business pays to cover its workers – 25 percent for nonprofit firms.  In 2014, the value of the credit will increase to 50 percent – 35 percent for nonprofits.

Your business qualifies for the credit if you cover at least 50 percent of the cost of health care coverage for your workers, pay average annual wages below $50,000, and have less than the equivalent of 25 full-time workers (for example, a firm with fewer than 50 half-time workers would be eligible). 

The size of the credit depends on your average wages and the number of employees you have.  The full credit is available to firms with average wages below $25,000 and less than 10 full-time equivalent workers.  

It phases out gradually for firms with average wages between $25,000 and $50,000 and for firms with the equivalent of between 10 and 25 full-time workers. To learn more about the small business tax credit, you can also visit IRS.gov