Massachusetts Health Connector enrollment numbers may be way up this year, but small business owners are still struggling to find workable coverage options for themselves and their employees.
Here are the two top problems:
1. Cost
While healthcare costs have been on the rise for years, mandated coverage under the Affordable Care Act has exacerbated the problem for many small businesses. Bill Vernon, NFIB’s Massachusetts state director, says NFIB supports a renewed focus on costs for consumers and believes this will force consideration of and acceleration of provider payment reform.
Mark Cohen, M.D., of Acton Medical Associates, is seeing high costs affect younger workers especially.
“Young people should be offered a low-cost policy for catastrophic coverage,” he says. “Young people often work for small, growing businesses, which often don’t have the financial strength of more established companies that can offer more comprehensive coverage. Being forced to buy high-priced insurance is a strong growth-deterrent for blue collar-type companies, typically in the service sector, and is another incentive for our youth to move to other parts of the country where healthcare costs less.”
2. Lack of choice
Under the guise of streamlining the healthcare shopping experience for consumers, Massachusetts Health Connector officials are considering limiting the number of plans offered. This, however, only further drives up costs.
“NFIB supports greater flexibility of plan design as a way to inject more competition into the system,” Vernon says. “The limited choices afforded small businesses, including a limitation on group buying cooperatives, affect prices. While some limitations on products in the exchange are intended to simplify the buying decisions for small business, NFIB remains wary of the impact on the market from limiting choice.”
Committee hearings for proposed legislation is slated to begin in late March, and NFIB will be monitoring developments and supporting reforms that will lower costs, improve the state’s insurance exchange and block additional mandated coverages.
