Obamacare Changes for 2015
Starting after New Year’s Day there will be changes implemented to Obamacare. Many people are not fond of this, and rightfully so. Having to deal with frequent insurance changes is not something someone wants to do, especially year after year.
When you signed up for you insurance last year, how long did you wait? If you wait too long this time, be aware that one of the changes for 2015 is that the open enrollment period will now be shorter, in fact by 50%. For 2014, the open enrollment period was 6 months long (Oct. 2013 – March 31, 2014) and now that has been reduced to just 3 months (Nov. 15 – Feb 15, 2015). The impact of this means that people need to get their insurance in order earlier which could be difficult to do right after the holiday season.
One of the biggest headaches with Obamacare last year was that insurance companies had a hard time dealing with the demand. For insurance companies this time around, the reduction of time will have them dealing with a higher quantity of customers at one time compared to last year. When Obamacare was rolled out last year, no one knew what to expect and there were issues with healthcare.gov when it went live, so hopefully things will go much better this year.
Along with a shorter enrollment period, the penalty for not having insurance will increase. For this current year the penalty for not having insurance was the greater of $95 or 1% of your annual salary. Starting in 2015 however, the penalty will increase to $325 or 2% of your annual salary. The idea for increasing the penalty is to encourage more people to sign up for insurance coverage. The more people that sign up, the lower the medical costs due to there being a larger population of people to spread the cost amongst.
Starting in 2015, employers will be affected by the Obamacare changes as well, as there may be an employer mandate for some businesses. In 2014, businesses were not subject to the employer mandate that requires them to offer affordable health plans to their fill-time employees. If necessary, employers could subsidize their plans or they will get hit with a $2-3,000 penalty per employee.
Did you know the way you enroll is dependent on which state you live in? Now in Oregon and Nevada, Healthcare.gov will be the source for their insurance. The state’s run health exchanges for both states are in dire need of repair and it would be easier to go this route instead of fixing them. Another state based change is some people need to re-enroll manually like they did last year, and others will have an automatic re-enrollment. Depending on where you live, enrolling for your new insurance policy can be either easy or very confusing.
There are other changes on the bill for 2015, but these are the most pertinent to the average person. All of this comes right after the most stressful time of the year, and you may forget about it if it’s not at the top of your list. Dealing with insurance can be extremely confusing for most people, but the experts at Ion Insurance deal with the stress so you don’t have to. Call or click today and find out why the professionals at Ion Insurance are the best at what they do.
