What Happens When Obamacare Is Repealed: How To Protect Your Employees

Days before the incoming Trump administration is due to take office, Americans are beginning to recognize that they have had positive experiences with Obamacare. Obamacare, for all of its faults, has given people who would not have been able to afford health insurance a policy that covers them and their family.

Throughout his campaign, Trump promised to repeal Obamacare his first day in office. Americans are starting to worry that he will make good on that promise. What is the public’s biggest fear? That Trump and congressional Republicans will repeal the Affordable Care Act without having another plan of action in place.

How will the repeal of Obamacare affect workers? How will it affect small business? Small business insurance includes employee protection, but will it alter coverage?

The Affordable Care Act: What’s at Stake

In a report shared by CNN Money, President-Elect Donald Trump plans to begin dismantling and to removing “the provisions that affect spending and revenues—including federal subsidies, Medicaid expansion, taxes and mandates that all individuals obtain coverage and large employers provide it.” If Obamacare is repealed (there has been speculation that there may not be enough Republican votes to get the repeal to pass) small businesses with 50 employees or less will no longer be required to offer affordable health insurance to the employees who work more than 30 hours a week.

Under the Affordable Care Act, large corporations and small businesses alike were required to provide health insurance for their staff. Repealing Obamacare means higher Medicare premiums, claims denials and more uninsured families. In short, middle-class and lower middle-class workers will be left paying for their expensive hospital bills yet again. If Trump and the congressional Republicans repeal Obamacare by “striping subsidies and removing the individual mandate, [it] could lead to the ‘death spiral’ of spiking premiums, dwindling healthy participants and fewer insurance companies offering coverage,” according to Amanda Ballantyne, national director of the Main Street Alliance.

The Affordable Care Act Repeal: What Can You Do?

A policy that can be purchased and bundled with a small business insurance plan is workers’ compensation. If one of your employees should get hurt on the job, workers’ compensation will cover their medical expenses, disability payments and rehabilitation fees. Employees however can only get this coverage if they are hurt on the job. If they want to set up a doctor’s appointment for an annual physical exam, have their eyesight tested or their teeth cleaned, they will have to pay for those services all out of pocket—workers’ compensation does not cover it.

Small business insurance bundled with workers’ compensation is a great way to protect your employees while they are on the job. Though the Affordable Care Act does demand that small businesses pay a good sum of money, the health insurance benefits protect your employees and helps to keep them happy and healthy. An unwell, sickly staff can run a company into the ground with low employee attendance and eventually high turn-overs. If it’s believed that as a business owner you do not support your employees, no one will want to work for you.

According to Politicus USA, 30 million Americans will lose access to healthcare coverage if Obamacare is repealed. Can your business afford to go without its benefits and that of small business insurance?

To protect your small business and your employees, look for a small business insurance package with CoverHound today.