{"id":17920,"date":"2013-05-14T15:11:50","date_gmt":"2013-05-14T19:11:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=17920"},"modified":"2013-05-14T15:11:50","modified_gmt":"2013-05-14T19:11:50","slug":"self-insurance-another-obamacare-unintended-consequence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/17920\/self-insurance-another-obamacare-unintended-consequence\/","title":{"rendered":"Self-Insurance Another ObamaCare Unintended Consequence"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/sallypipes\/2013\/05\/13\/u-s-companies-engage-in-financial-jiu-jitsu-to-get-around-obamacare\/\" target=\"_blank\">Sally Pipes<\/a> identifies an \u201cescape hatch\u201d for small businesses trying to avoid the costly employer mandates threatening employers with costly insurance premiums or fines:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A RAND analysis found that a fifth of firms with 50-200 workers had self-insured by 2010, the year Obamacare became law \u2014 up from 14 percent of such companies in 2006.<\/p>\n<p>A survey by Munich Health North America found that 82 percent of health insurance executives report seeing growing interest in self-funded coverage among employers. A California-based benefits consulting firm that helps companies self-insure told Kaiser Health News that its business has doubled in the past six months. And Cigna says that it saw self-coverage for small businesses grow by a fifth last year.<\/p>\n<p>Companies with younger, healthier workforces are leading the way. After all, with their population of low-risk employees, they have the most to gain. And that\u2019s bad news for Obamacare\u2019s exchanges.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The problem for ObamaCare is that the only way health insurance premiums will be (theoretically) affordable is if legions of young, healthy people join the exchanges\u2019 insurance pools. That&#8217;s because they are needed to pay into the system so that older and sicker people can draw down the benefits.<\/p>\n<p>But if small businesses opt to self-insure \u2013 especially if they are newer businesses more likely to employ younger and healthier workers \u2013 then that will drain the ObamaCare pools of the very people who will make them (barely) affordable.<\/p>\n<p>With this in mind, don\u2019t be surprised to see an IRS or HHS rule come down that prohibits self-insurance to prop up ObamaCare\u2019s exchange pools.<\/p>\n<p>As with the so-called \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/index.php\/commentary\/56-health-care\/1807-obamacares-family-glitch-hurts-the-middle-class\" target=\"_blank\">family glitch<\/a>,\u201d it\u2019s a ploy the Obama administration will be ready to use if its slapdash law continues to produce embarrassing unintended consequences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sally Pipes identifies an \u201cescape hatch\u201d for small businesses trying to avoid the costly employer mandates threatening employers with costly insurance premiums or fines: A RAND analysis found that a fifth of firms with 50-200 workers had self-insured by 2010, the year Obamacare became law \u2014 up from 14 percent of such companies in 2006. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3007,3308,186,1829,735,35,3703],"class_list":["post-17920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-exchange","tag-health","tag-hhs","tag-insurance","tag-irs","tag-obamacare","tag-small-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17920"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17920\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17928,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17920\/revisions\/17928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}