Obamacare’s impact on our startup and what to do to avoid rate hikes | Hacker News Reader

Obamacare’s impact on our startup and what to do to avoid rate hikes

distilnetworks.com

18 pointstechtime7714 comments

Not to the OP, but if the author or someone from distilnetworks.com reads this: you probably shouldn't have a customer service bot proactively try and chat with people who are just reading your blog.

I really appreciate the note. It is an actual person, not a bot that chats with each user but I actually agree with your perspective. It can be seen as intrusive. As the CEO, I'm making the executive decision to take the chat feature off the blog today. Thanks for helping improve our user experience!

I'm very glad you're making the executive decision as the CEO to remove the chat feature off the blog as opposed to just doing it.

Hah. Its not that simple to just pull off. The js code snippet is part of the theme and so we have to restructure several things to selectively place it on certain pages and not others. As a developer I hate having interrupts come in so I dont do that to my guys. We put it in the queue, it'll get done this week.

I was under the impression you were exempt if you have under 50 employees. I don't know how this effects traditional startups.

You are exempt from some aspects of the law but not the overall cost impact if you are under 50 employees.

My startup is still under 50 employees and the ACA has significantly increased our costs. We already offer generous healthcare benefits so the only thing that has changed is that we spend a lot more money under the new laws. The other option was to pass the steep cost hike on to the employees. This is not unique to my startup either.

For all the talk about how this law is supposedly great for startups, everyone I know has had the opposite experience in practice.

I think staying under 50 employees means you are exempt from being forced to offer insurance to full time employees (those with over 30 hours a week and/or salaried.) However, if you are offering health insurance - and most startups would be, then you are affected by the changes to private insurance.

Thats exactly right. ACA doesnt force you to offer insurance, but if you do your rates are likely to go up as a startup.

* If you're a startup that mostly employs 20-something males.

It's nothing to do with being a startup and everything to do with demographics.

Additionally, for really small startups that don't have a giant pile of capital or enough people for a group plan, the healthcare exchanges make insurance "possible" instead of "better hope you're married and the spouse can do family plan".

Some people may still consider twitter a "startup"

Traditionally, i was under the impression that it was a company intending to have an IPO that has yet to do so.

I'm aware that modern understandings differ.

Yes, if you are on the younger end of the spectrum, your premiums are likely to go up. If you are on the older end of the spectrum your premiums are likely to go down, or at least, you're now able to afford insurance. If you own a company in an industry that employs people on the younger end of the spectrum, yes, you might be paying a bit more so that your employees can afford healthcare in their later years. Previously your costs were artificially low.

"Now, you can still do some of those tricks, but not as extensively." The language in this blog post make it pretty clear that this isn't a company you want to work for. Stop trying to nickel and dime your employees. Provide good affordable health care for everyone from the CEO down to the cleaner. Be a socially responsible entity. Make that one of the pillars of your business. Success without it isn't success at all.

I didn't get that at all. I think you're bringing some bias to it - I can't wrap my head around how else you would have come away with that sentiment. Either that or you didn't really read it. Let me do the whole paragraph:

In the past, you could sometimes defer some of your healthcare costs by offering only high-deductible plans. You could offer policy choices with higher copays. You could even incentivize employees to drop coverage altogether.

Is any of that untrue, or bad for a company to do? Absolutely not. If I say to an employee, "Which would you rather have - a $70,000 salary with a $5,000 deductible health plan, or a $60,000 salary with a no deductible plan?", which one will they choose? Hell if I know in advance - that's up to each employee. I've offered them the same basic thing and let them choose what fits them the best. I fail to see how that's "bad".

Get off your high horse.

After historically being handcuffed with limited options, it's good to see small companies taking a proactive approach to an evolving health insurance marketplace.

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