The patient Protection and affordable Care Act was appended into law by president Barrack Obama in March 2010. This gave birth to the Affordable Care Act after some amendments were made to the original Act a few weeks later (Morse 208). The Act injected significant changes on healthcare delivery in the United States. However, there are myriads of business and human resource implications that this healthcare Act brought into focus.
According to the arguments presented in the article, there are several uncertainties that bedevil individual entrepreneurs and employers in regards to the Affordable Care Act (Morse 212). There are quite a number of business challenges presented by section 36B of the Act. As a matter of fact, exchanges are instrumental on several aspects of this piece of legislation and also for credits described in section 36B (Morse 238).
For instance, this section clearly describes the details of the employer penalty tax. It is interesting to note that each employer is expected by the Act to have at least one worker who is employed on fulltime basis who is covered by the provisions of the Act.
However, the application of this Act requires an employee who resides in a region where Exchange has been put in place. The most challenging aspect of this Act is the dispute resolution part for individuals who live in states not covered by credit exchanges.
At this point, it is evident that unfamiliar problems may be presented by multi-state operations bearing in mind that businesses can grossly suffer the impact of resolving disputes that arise from employees hired from other states. Worse still, subsidized coverage may be pursued by some employees especially if the employer decides to drop some coverage.
Even if the latter is possible, the remaining states may not be in a position to do the same. Gauging from the aforementioned factors, it implies that locating business operations and the level of accessing such businesses especially in the presence of jurisdictions that are competing against each other.
Furthermore, the process of hiring employees located in states where Exchanges have not been created will be a gross hindrance. This has definitely interfered with the selection of employees when hiring human resource within business organizations. To some extent, it implies that some business entities may completely fail to enjoy the benefits of hiring certain professionals merely because they are not favored by the provisions of the Affordable Care Act.
It would have been possible for the Congress to seek alternative funding for the welfare benefits by imposing new taxes. For example, services such as sterilization and contraception could be subsidized by the government instead of negatively impacting businesses with the new tax regimes under the Affordable Care Act. Even if such alternative measures could be taken, the American public and pressure groups could still be on the forefront in fighting such proposals on the basis of moral concerns.
As it stands now, the Affordable Care Act has negatively affected the operations of several businesses due to additional taxation to cover the benefits described in the piece of legislation. Moreover, there are several underlying uncertainties that businesses still face in regards to this law.
If the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act adopted in March 2010 would have been left intact as it was without any additional amendments, both small and large businesses would be safeguarded from the negative effects being experienced today.
Works Cited
Morse, Edward. Lifting The Fog: Navigating Penalties In The Affordable Care Act. Creighton Law Review 46.2 (2013): 207-257. Print.