Menu Close

Tag: Law

President Obama Will Veto the 40 hours change to ACA

Obama Threatens Veto of Increase of Hours in Health Care Law

The White House says President Barack Obama will veto legislation that would increase his health care law’s definition of a full-time worker from 30 to 40 hours per week.

Republicans say the health law’s 30-hour requirement is encouraging companies to cut workers’ hours. The White House said in statement Wednesday there is no evidence the law has caused a broad shift to part-time work.

The House plans to debate the measure this week as one of its first orders of business in the new Congress.

The White House argues the bill would reduce the number of Americans with employer-based health insurance coverage and create incentives for employers to shift employees to part-time work. The White House says the bill would also increase the deficit by $45.7 billion over 10 years.

Source: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/obama-threatens-veto-increase-hours-health-care-law-28058327

If High Court Strikes Federal Exchange Subsidies, Health Law Could Unravel

Exactly what would happen to the Affordable Care Act if the Supreme Court invalidates tax credits in the three dozen states where the federal government runs the program?

Legal scholars say a decision like that would deal a potentially lethal blow to the law because it would undermine the government-run insurance marketplaces that are its backbone, as well as the mandate requiring most Americans to carry coverage.

In King v. Burwell, the law’s challengers argue that Congress intended to limit federal tax credits to residents of states running their own insurance exchanges. Currently only 13 states and the District of Columbia operate exchanges on their own; another 10 are in some sort of partnership with the federal government. Federal officials run the rest.

The court is slated to hear the case in early 2015. Should it find that subsidies in federally run exchanges are not allowed, “I don’t think there are any rosy scenarios,” said Timothy Jost, a law professor at Washington and Lee University and a supporter of the law. “It’s a complete disaster.”

The immediate impact is that the Internal Revenue Service would stop paying subsidies to those in federally run exchanges. In 2014, more than 4.6 million people were getting those subsidies but the number may grow to as many as 13.4 million by 2016, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, (Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent program of the foundation.)

Read the full article here.

Contact Steven G. Cosby, MHSA with questions or to request more information and to schedule a healthcare plan evaluation, savings analysis or group plan solution for your company.

cosby ig logo