You may find this article regarding Obamacare to be of interest. Part-time employees may receive a better deal through Obamacare than they presently receive from their employers. What appears below is a summary. A link to the entire article appears at the end of this posting. - Steve B. Part-Timers Losing Health Insurance May Want To Thank Their Companies By Rick Newman | The Exchange – Fri, Sep 20, 2013 Home Depot (HD) and Trader Joe’s have decided to stop offering health insurance for part-time employees, moving them over to Obamacare instead. More companies seem sure to follow. Once the new health law has been in place for a few months (Obamacare goes into effect on January 1, 2014), however, Part-Time America may issue a collective sigh of relief. Nobody ever held up today’s part-time "mini-med" plans as model coverage. Insurance offered under the Affordable Care Act, by contrast, could end up being a much better deal. Obamacare is complicated, and it will require many people to do detailed research on their insurance options instead of having an employer do it for them. There have also been elaborate efforts by foes of the program to depict it as The Ruination of Everything. So it’s not surprising that part-timers being told their employer is cutting them loose and sending them over to Obamacare are a little jumpy. Actually enrolling could calm them down, however. Obamacare was designed to make decent health insurance affordable for people who otherwise can’t afford it, and whether you love or hate the program, it seems likely to succeed at that basic mission. That’s because the program subsidizes the cost of insurance based on your income, with the largest subsidies going to those with the lowest incomes. There are many insurance choices under Obamacare that vary by state and apply to different income levels, which adds to the confusion. But the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation has built a helpful calculator (click on link below) that lets you enter your income and a few other basic details to get an idea of how much insurance would cost you under the program. Link to HELPFUL CALCULATOR - kff.org/interactive/subsidy-calculator/ A single parent with three kids and an annual income of $25,000, for instance, could get an $8,800 insurance plan for a total out-of-pocket cost of $500 per year. Subsidies, in other words, cover 94% of the cost. Try to beat that on part-time pay. A two-parent family with two kids and a $50,000 income could get a $10,000 plan for $3,365, with subsidies covering 66% of the cost. There’s one catch: You only qualify for such deals if you’re not able to get coverage through your employer. So if you’re a part-timer whose company canceled your watered-down insurance coverage, it may have actually done you a favor. Read the entire HEALTH INSURANCE article at this link - finance.yahoo/blogs/the-exchange/part-timers-losing-healthcare-insurance-may-want-thank-210354500.html
Posted on: Sun, 22 Sep 2013 15:15:00 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015