TPG’s Healthcare Reform Review: May 2014
“Stalemate”
Welcome to the sixth edition of TPG’s Healthcare Review, a forum to keep our current clients, prospective clients, and candidates apprised of the ever-changing landscape of healthcare in a post-reform world. Tracking the iterations, implementations, extensions and exemptions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA) can be a full time job. Each new day seems to bring a wave of information which needs to be fully digested before the next news cycle starts. Again, it is our intent to update this newsletter monthly through the end of 2014 to keep you well-informed of the latest developments and their implications. We thank you in advance for your interest, and welcome your comments and questions throughout the year.
No News Is Good News?
This month’s focus will be on the lack of news regarding PPACA over the past month. “No news is good news” is a relative comment based on which side of the discussion you are on. Since the close of the open enrollment period on March 31, 2014, there was an initial flurry of conversations about the enrollment numbers, whether they would be substantiated and whether the reported number of 8 million enrollees made the program a success. Yet since the initial press conferences, the news media has moved on to more pressing matters. We will use this month’s newsletter to frame the current talking points of the PPACA analysts both for and against.
The first point to remember is that the Employer Mandate has not been put into effect. The lightning rod of critics trying to make the case that PPACA would be a job killer remains in a state of delay. The theoretical argument over “full time” hours and “essential minimum coverage” and “penalties” and their impact on costs and employment continues to be a future event. As a result of the postponement, the regulations that threatened to cancel many of the existing plans remain an uncertainty.
The largest achievement of the law thus far is a modest decline in the percentage of Americans without insurance. This reversed an accelerating trend of increased numbers of uninsured since the financial crisis of 2008. Even with the questions surrounding the policy numbers from the open enrollment period, there is little doubt that there may be as many as 1.5 million previously uninsured individuals that now have some level of coverage. The coverage expansion means that more Americans have the extra measure of financial security which comes with medical insurance. This is one of the law’s good points that many critics have failed to acknowledge.
Any celebration of the success of PPACA is premature at this time, however. In a recent column from Ramesh Ponnuru of The National Review, he wrote “Obamacare’s near-death experience during the last months of 2013 has distorted the media’s treatment of the program, making it seem more successful than it is. From 2009 through mid-2013, the critics were not saying that the exchange websites would be a catastrophic failure. They were, by and large, taken by surprise as much as the administration was by their early dysfunction. Leaving aside those chaotic months, the picture of Obamacare today looks more like one the critics painted than the one supporters did: a lot of trouble for a small gain.”
The political picture remains roughly the same as it has over the past few years. The administration was hoping that the 8 million enrollments would be a turning point in the approval ratings of the law. Unfortunately for the President, more Americans continue to disapprove than to approve of PPACA. The silver lining for the administration is that only a minority wants to repeal the law, because many people want the law fixed or changed. One thing is for certain, the politics of “Obamacare” will loom large in the mid-term elections this November as control of the US Senate hangs in the balance.
So where do we stand in the middle of May, 2014? There is an ongoing stalemate with the enactment of the law as well as the public’s opinion regarding the law. As the year progresses, we are hopeful that the picture regarding the Employer Mandate and its impact on businesses and employees will become more clear.
How TPG Can Help Your Business
At The Performance Group, we will do our best to keep you informed of the continual changes in PPACA which could impact your business/employment. To hear how The Performance Group can help to make your business life as pain free as possible, please click here to contact us. Thank you, again, for your interest.
Thomas E. Readdy
President
The Performance Group