In a previous email I said that under the Affordable Care Act all businesses that provide health insurance to employees would be required to offer coverage to dependents. Businesses however would not be required to provide insurance to dependents. The significance of this is that if an employer offers insurance to dependents the dependents would not be eligible for subsidies. Yesterday I received a call from Michael Lujan the head of the Small Business Health Insurance Options Program [SHOP] telling me that he has received information that businesses with less than 50 employees are not required to offer coverage to dependents and therefore employees dependents will be eligible for subsidies. This is a big deal because had employers been required to offer insurance to dependents, thereby loosing the benefit of the subsidies, the employer would in many cases be doing a disservice to their employees because the cost of the dependent coverage for the employee would exceed the cost of individual coverage for the employee and dependents. To get an idea of what the subsidies are go to www.coveredca.com and see calculator.
Two awful bills are dead for this legislative session.
AB626. This bill would have eliminated many of the reforms we worked so hard on last year. Small Business California put together a coalition of over 30 small business associations to help defeat this bill.
AB1138. This bill was administrative nightmare for small businesses and insurance carriers.
We are finalizing our opposition letter for AB 769 which would eliminate the tax credit for loss Carrybacks. We will be sending our association opposition letter out today with about 30 associations signing. Thank you to all that have signed and if you have not and want to add your association please let me know today.
Scott Hauge
President
Small Business California
2311 Taraval Street
San Francisco, CA 94116
shauge@cal-insure.com
415-680-2188
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