Concordia College
HRM 353
ABSTRACT
Since the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) was enacted in March 2010, HR departments have been working to make necessary changes to their health care benefit programs. The most significant changes must be made by 2014. The effects on health plan administration will be dramatic, as employers begin to deal with new players in the health insurance arena; state insurance exchanges.
Introduction
PPACA was passed to ensure that no U.S. citizen is to be without healthcare insurance. The passing of the PPACA bill will require vast changes to how the U.S. government, and organizations benefits departments implement this nationwide healthcare. These changes that will take effect in the upcoming years of 2014-2015, will be the largest ever addressed in recent years, specifically given the large amount of uncertainty of the short- and long-term effects. The purpose of this paper is to outline and discuss some of the key issues that will be faced to employers in the U.S. and a focus on the impact of the PPACA on human resource departments. Health reform will have a large financial impact on America. The bill is expected to cost $940 billion over the next ten years alone (Silverleib, 2010). This is one of the overall, most expensive pieces of legislation ever passed by the US government. Even though the amount of money Americans spend on health care each year dwarfs this cost, it is still a large portion of currency that the government will have to acquire.
The nearly one trillion dollar bill will be funded partly by higher taxes. The higher a person’s income is, the higher the income tax rates they will face. This means that half of American’s who are required to pay income taxes will be hit hard by this, while the other half of the citizens who are not required to pay income tax, won’t be as affected. This amount of money spent in this amount of time will inevitably have an effect that
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