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7 Best Things About the American Health Care Act

Very interesting. This is from an email newsletter and just good to know info. Enjoy…

There are many benefits to the American Health Care Act. Here are our top seven:

  1. It dismantles Obamacare just like we promised and eliminates the individual mandate. Washington has no right to tell the American people what products it must buy. It is a fundamental abuse of our most basic freedoms.

  2. It provides massive tax relief and stops the growing health-care costs. As repeatedly proven by history, free markets and fair competition produce lower costs. By removing burdensome federal rules (i.e. the medical-device tax and health-insurance taxes), we’ll enable the marketplace to produce higher-quality care for you and your community.

  3. It nearly doubles the amount of money people can contribute to market-friendly Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) and makes them more flexible, so people can use them to purchase things they actually need, like over-the-counter medications.

  4. It blocks federal funds from going to abortion providers, such as Planned Parenthood, ensuring that your tax dollars are used to save lives rather than to destroy them.

  5. It protects those with pre-existing conditions. The AHCA stops insurance companies from kicking people off their coverage for getting sick, and ensures that people with pre-existing conditions won’t be denied insurance.

  6. It returns power to the states with the biggest entitlement reform in a generation. It puts Medicaid on a budget, ending the program’s open-ended funding, focusing funds on those most in need. What’s more, as we scale back Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, we won’t punish those who received insurance through Medicaid under Obamacare. We will continue to pay the same rate as before for every person still on Medicaid as long as he or she remains eligible for the program.

  7. It gives all Americans some tax relief. As of now, workers who receive health insurance from their employers benefit because the money both employer and employee use to pay for their health insurance is untaxed. The same goes for Americans who are enrolled in government health care programs. But those Americans who do not have either option do not receive the same benefits. Our plan rectifies this unfairness by offering tax credits and expanded HSAs to help these Americans purchase the coverage they choose.

By repealing and replacing Obamacare with the AHCA, we’re offering the American people freedom, protection, and compassion.

Be sure to share this with your friends and family! Encourage them to #ReadTheBill and discover what the American Health Care Act does and doesn’t do. As always, feel free to reply back to this email with your thoughts and feedback—we read all of your emails!

Plan Would Achieve Universal Coverage but Likely Fall Short of Funds

New Financial Analysis of ColoradoCare Finds Billions in Administrative Savings, but Also Projects Revenue Shortfalls
Date: August 8, 2016
Contact: Deborah Goeken, Vice President of Communications
ColoradoCare, the proposed universal health care system on November’s ballot, would struggle to bring in enough revenue to cover its costs, according to an independent financial analysis released today by the Colorado Health Institute.
The Colorado Health Institute is a nonpartisan source of independent and objective health information, data and analysis. The new study finds that:
  • ColoradoCare would nearly break even in its first year, but would slide into ever-increasing deficits in future years without additional tax increases.
  • On the plus side for ColoradoCare, it would be able to reach its goal of saving money in the health care system by cutting billions of dollars in administrative costs and insurance company profits. That money could be reallocated to provide health insurance to the 6.7 percent of Coloradans who remain uninsured, making Colorado the first state to achieve universal coverage.
  • However, the revenues for ColoradoCare — primarily from a new 10 percent income tax — wouldn’t be able to keep up with increasing health care costs, resulting in red ink each year of its first decade.
The analysis finds that ColoradoCare would face the same financial dilemma as the current health care system — the inability to tame rising health care costs. That would create a structural problem.
Although savings on administrative costs would grow over time, those savings would be overwhelmed by the increasing cost of health care, which is projected to grow faster than tax revenue. This is crucial because taxes would account for roughly two-thirds of ColoradoCare’s projected funding.
This is the second in a series of independent analyses by the Colorado Health Institute of Amendment 69, the proposed constitutional amendment that would create ColoradoCare. The first installmentpublished in April, focused on how ColoradoCare would work and posed key questions about its structure, financing and governance.
Michele Lueck, president and CEO of the Colorado Health Institute, said that these analyses of ColoradoCare fulfill an important part of the organization’s mission of bringing evidence-based information and rigorous analysis to key health care policy discussions.
“By mission and by charge, we do not take positions on legislative choices, policy options or proposed constitutional amendments,” she said. “Our job is to shed light on the issues, bring in disciplined analysis, often where there isn’t any, and allow educated voters and policymakers to make informed choices on matters of health and health care.”
An infographic detailing how the Colorado Health Institute conducted the analysis is available here.
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About the Colorado Health Institute: The Colorado Health Institute is a trusted source of independent and objective health information, data and analysis for the state’s health care leaders. The Colorado Health Institute is funded by the Caring for Colorado Foundation, Rose Community Foundation, The Colorado Trust and the Colorado Health Foundation.

DOL’s New Overtime Rules

On May 18th the Department of Labor announced the much anticipated changes to regulations within the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which essentially governs rules surrounding compensation, including when employees are eligible for overtime. The new changes that will impact all businesses as of December 1st of this year relate to the salary threshold for employees to keep their exempt (salary) status.

Department of Labor doubled the salary threshold for employees to qualify as exempt (not entitled to overtime) from $23,000 to more than $47,000 a year. All employers must comply by December 1, 2016.  Here’s a great resource. Guidance for Employers FLSA OT Rule Changes

And one of our HR consultant colleagues Heidi Johnson @ Investment HR wrote a great article on the new rules. Here’s the article. Contact your HR expert today to have them help you be prepared.

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