Radio Smart Talk: Answers to your Affordable Care Act questions

Radio Smart Talk for Monday, February 11:

Under thePatient Protection and Affordable Care Act, there will be new healthcare rules and changes in 2013, but 2014 shapes up as the headliner for President Obama’s signature piece of legislation. That’s when the individual mandate that requires all Americans to obtainhealth insuranceor face fines becomes law. It also is when insurance companies must accept customers, even if they have a pre-existing condition.

Yet, almost three years after it was enacted, the ACA is still a mystery to many people, including healthcare consumers, providers, and employers.

Radio Smart Talk has focused on the law several times over the past year and yet listeners continue to learn and ask questions.That’s what this episode is designed for — asking and answering questions. (Listen to previous programs on this topic:The Affordable Care Act:Q & A Part IandQ & A Part II)

Shelly Bloom, the president-elect for the Board of Trustees for the Pennsylvania Association of Health Underwriters, and Vik Mangalmurti, Vice-President of HighMark’s Office of Health Care Reform, answer questions about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in this Radio Smart Talk. Listen to Shelly’s previous Radio Smart Talk interview about the 2013 changes under the Affordable Care Act here.

Much of the attention on the ACA now is related to what employers, who have provided health insurance to their employees, will do. Starting in 2014 under the law, companies with 50 or more full-time employees must provide health insurance, or they’ll be subject to a penalty of two-thousand dollars a worker, minus the first 30 employees.

Will employers decide it will cost them less money if they no longer offer the health benefits or will they continue to provide health insurance? Read about how a couple of midstate businesses are coping with the changes.

We’ll look at that and other questions in this program.

Listen to the program: {mp3remote}http://witf.vo.llnwd.net/o35/smarttalk/radiosmarttalk/RST_February112013.mp3{/mp3remote}

Tell us: What are your questions about the Affordable Care Act? Please let us know in the comments section below and we will try to answer them in upcoming programs.

Related stories:

• Insurance under the Affordable Care Act
• The Affordable Care Act: What is it?
• The Affordable Care Act: A new focus on prevention

---