Update

5 problems that still remain with the federal health law

supreme court

The United States Supreme Court has ruled in favor of allowing government subsidies to flow to states with federally-created insurance exchanges as well as their state-created counterparts, but the decision did not solve several other issues connected with the law.

In fact, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce said in a recent post on its website that “Nothing changed.”

The Chamber lists five problems with the law and why they will need to be fixed before any real health care reform can take place:

  1. Employers still have a perverse incentive to hire part-time workers over full-time ones. A University of California–Berkeley study found 2.3 million workers are at risk of having their hours cut.
  2. The medical device tax continues to punish companies, forcing them to reduce investments and hiring and making them less globally competitive.
  3. A $189 billion tax on health plans, the Health Insurance Tax in effect since 2014, is hurting small businesses that buy insurance on the fully-insured market. The National Federation of Independent Business estimates that the tax will cost up to 286,000 jobs.
  4. Small businesses are about to get hit with fewer health plan choices and higher costs, because Washington will expand the small-group market in 2016.
  5. The 40% excise (“Cadillac”) tax on high-value health plans is still on track to hit millions of workers and employers in a few years. The tax, opposed by both unions and business groups, is designed to eventually hit every health plan.

To read the U.S. Chamber’s piece in its entirety, click here.

Also, there are several resources here on InformationStation.org that help “connect the dots” between the Affordable Care Act and you: