On Medical Insurance - Term Paper Example

With regard to business, employers will be required to cover all their employees despite their medical condition. Failure to cover its employees would tantamount to paying fines which the law will impose on the company. This is important to mention because this is the new context that businesses will be operating in terms of providing health insurance to their employees. If the law will be strictly adhered to, businesses will have to cover all of its employees including those who were previously uninsurable and those who have pre-exisitng conditions.

That would mean an added cost in terms of paying premiums as employees who were not uninsurable has to be insured now. To be able to control the seemingly rising insurance cost, employers adopted several ways to be able to save on cost. One of the option being considered by the big companies such as AT&T and Caterpillar, is to stop providing health coverage for their employers and pay the fines that the government will levy. They will instead give raise to their employees in lieue of non-coverage and still save money (Colvin, 2012).

Big companies are considering this option because the forced coverage of the new law on health insurance on all of its employees including those who were previously uninsurable would mean huge addition of cost due to the scale of its employees. Such, they deemed it more cost effective to stop insurance coverage, just pay the fine and give employees a raise as a replacement of health insurance coverage. Another option that employers are now implementing is to self-insure their employees. It meant that the employers themselves would now be responsible for covering the health insurance of their employees and would pay their claims directly rather than going through the conventional health insurance policies (whose cost has gone up with the implementation of Obamacare).

The self-insured employer choses and designs their own plan and hire a third party administrator to manage the plan. And employers who cannot afford huge claims purchase stop-losss insurance that would cover the claim just in case they reach a certain level (Sammer, 2011). This became an option because the new law on health insurance removed the annual and lifetime payment caps that made stop-loss coverage a good alternative among employers. These cost saving device of employers may also be challenged by employees who would actually opt in with the coverage of the new health insurance law especially parents who have children under 27 years old.

Under the law, employees who will be covered by the insurance policy of their employers can now include their children under the age of 27 in their insurance coverage with Obama’s new health care law. This component of the new law will be very advantageous to employees who has/have sickly child/children because the cost incurred in the health care of their children can now be shouldered by their present insurance when the new health care law. Employers who will attempt to stop health insurance coverage of their employees are almost certain to have conflict with them because that would mean depriving employees who are