By, Christine Pollack, vice president of government affairs, RILA
Today’s historic Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) does nothing to settle the minds of America’s job creators. While today’s ruling puts to bed the question of the constitutionality of the individual mandate, it complicates matters on how Medicaid-eligibility will affect the law’s requirements for multi-state employers.
Further, with less than a year and a half before the law goes into effect, retailers still do not have any proposed regulations on the key aspects of the law’s employer mandate. Complying with the numerous new requirements under the ACA will prove to be very costly to businesses. In this fragile economy, uncertainty and the threat of costly compliance requirements does nothing to settle the minds of retailers.
So many questions loom about this extremely complex law and its repercussions. Retailers fear overregulation paralyzing them from continuing to offer quality, affordable health coverage to employers and their families.
Nearly 170 million Americans have coverage through today’s voluntary, employer-sponsored system which has been in existence since World War II. Come 2014, today’s voluntary system will cease to exist. To protect and improve the employer-sponsored system, the ACA must be repealed. RILA supports returning to the drawing board and addressing the biggest problem in our nation’s health system which the drafters of the ACA ignored – its costs.
