Healthcare Reform has come into effect after lots of debate, discussion and without the vote of Republicans. But industry stakeholders, including employers and insurance companies, have almost a consistent voice and opinion to address the concern Healthcare Reform raises for them.
“There are several ways healthcare could be reformed with overall positive results and containment of cost increases. There are some positive things about this bill and there are negative things that will outweigh the good. Cost will increase in addition to normal increase because of healthcare reform. There needs to be medical pricing/cost reform to make a true impact for savings,” said a respondent of the survey.
With the passing of Healthcare Reform, health insurance cost will inevitably rise. While employees might be on “Cloud Nine” now that healthcare reform will provide them lower costs and better care, employers have started thinking otherwise. This is because waiving pre-existing condition clauses, eliminating lifetime and annual limits and increasing young Americans insurance rates in order to lower older Americans insurance rates is only going to drive up the cost of health insurance.
Hence, 73 percent responded that health insurance cost will increase significantly, while 24 percent believed it will surely increase at certain level.
Starting in 2014, any person can wait until they are sick to purchase health insurance rather than purchasing when they are healthy. 96 percent of the respondents think this will destroy the underwriting process.
87 percent of the respondents think negatively about low employee cost penalty and they think that this is not sufficient to force employees to buy health insurance. If that proves be the case, reform will work more negatively for employees than its intention of a positive effect as employees will be left out on shore with high healthcare and insurance cost by employers.
Waiving pre-existing condition clauses and making insurance premiums equal for healthy and sick people will drive health insurance costs up dramatically, making employers and insurers more interested in offering medical tourism as an option to keep costs down.
The low penalty cost for employees who choose not to buy health insurance is so little it will not encourage Americans to buy health insurance, starts at $95 for an individual in 2014 and rises to $695 in 2016.
The healthcare reform survey reveals that the majority of its participants are in agreement—no American will be able to afford the health insurance premiums for their families in 2020. The family insurance premiums will cost approximately $30,000 to $40,000 per year, while the average income of families is estimated $56,000.
When asked about impact of healthcare reform on businesses, whether it be healthcare professional, insurance agent or insurance companies, 80 percent shown a negative expression towards the effect.
