New rules for health insurance rate increases took effect on September 1st. By giving consumers access to more information about why insurers are raising their rates – and whether experts deem the increases reasonable – the new rules aim to put downward pressure on health insurance premiums. Continue reading
Changes are finally coming to states’ health insurance marketplaces. For small businesses, these changes can’t come soon enough. New rules prohibiting discrimination and strengthening oversight of rate increases will protect small businesses from rate shocks. A guaranteed essential benefits package will provide assurance of a minimum level of coverage. And new state insurance exchanges will enhance choice and competition. Continue reading
Big bank lobbyists have been putting on a full-court press in Washington, D.C. to roll back components of the financial overhaul passed last year and free Wall Street to go back to the “business as usual” that led to the financial crisis in 2008.
The bankers are gunning for the new Consumer Protection Bureau and its leading champion, Elizabeth Warren. They’re lobbying to starve regulatory agencies of the funds needed to enforce the provisions of the new law. And on Wednesday, they went after small businesses with an amendment to delay (read, kill) new rules limiting debit swipe fees. But this time, the bankers lost. Continue reading
This year Uncle Sam pushed Tax Day back to April 18, giving us all a three-day tax filing holiday. It’s almost enough to make you feel warm and fuzzy inside. Until, that is, you hear about GE, which apparently is on extended vacation, paying essentially nothing in taxes for 2010 despite raking in $5.1 billion in U.S. profits and $14.2 billion worldwide. And who’s footing the bill for GE’s tax vacation? We are. Continue reading
On January 18, New Jersey Main Street Alliance leader Odette Cohen, a pediatrician and owner of Son Light Pediatrics in Willingboro, NJ jumped on a train down to Washington, DC to testify at a hearing on the proposed rollback of the Affordable Care Act.
“The health care law throws a series of lifelines to small businesses,” Dr. Cohen said. “The new small business tax credits, stronger rate review, a value for premiums requirement, and state insurance exchanges – these measures will give small businesses more bargaining power and end the worst insurance company abuses. Who would want to take that away from us?” Continue reading
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been all over the airwaves recently–and not just with its hefty ad buys targeting candidates in the fast approaching November elections. Last week, the Chamber earned a wave of critical press when the story broke that it was funneling donations from international corporations and overseas affiliates into the same bank account used to fund its electioneering campaign ads1. Continue reading
September 23 was an important day for health care–and an important day for small businesses. Exactly six months after the enactment of the Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act (PPACA), September 23 was the date on which a range of new insurance protections took effect. Across the country, small business owners from The Main Street Alliance, NWFCO’s national alliance of state-based small business coalitions, took the opportunity to speak up about how the law will help them and their employees. Continue reading
In late July, small business owners from all across the country – from Maine to Montana, Louisiana to North Dakota – left their homes and their businesses on a mission: to carry a message about small business values direct from their Main Streets back home all the way to Washington, D.C. It was the “America’s Small Business Values at Work” summit, sponsored by the Main Street Alliance, NWFCO, and Community Organizations in Action. Continue reading
The ink may have dried on the federal health care reform bill, but the health insurance industry isn’t packing up its bag of tricks and going quietly into the night. Instead, insurers actually appear to be stepping up their attempts to game the system, seeking to exploit the window of opportunity before new rules and regulations take effect. They’re scheming to (a) inflate their rates, (b) kick customers with health issues off their rolls, and (c) employ creative accounting to reclassify costs, all in the interest of maximizing short-term profits. Continue reading
