Steve Weld presents at Affordable Care Act update seminar

September 29, 2015

On Tuesday, September 29, Steve Weld was a co-presenter at an Eau Claire Chamber of Commerce Seminar entitled “Affordable Care Act Update; What Employers Need to Know”. This is the fourth in a series of seminars offered by the Chamber to its members since the passage of the Act. Steve has presented at all four.

Weld advised that the uninsured rate in the U.S. has dropped from 20.3%in 2012 to 12.6% in 2015. Thus, there are nearly 17.6 million newly insured people. If the goal of the Act was to decrease the number of uninsured people, the Act has been successful.

However, Weld reported that what remains unknown is the Act’s impact on health care costs. Clearly, there is a cost inherent in serving 17.6 million more insureds – a cost which is reduced by implementation of the exchanges and offset by taxes on uninsured individuals (the individual mandate) and employers who do not offer affordable health care which meets certain minimal requirements (the employer mandate).

Weld reported that the Act has resulted in the consolidation within the insurance industry and among health care providers, including hospitals, but the jury is out on whether that will reduce or increase the cost of health care. Weld summarized two recent U.S. Supreme Court cases and then focused on the implementation and potential impact of the “Cadillac” tax scheduled to go into effect in 2018.

Weld Riley, S.C. was founded in 1991. The firm consists of lawyers across four offices (Eau Claire, Menomonie, Wausau and Black River Falls) and offers a full range of legal services, including labor and employment, business law, estate planning, tax representation, municipal law, mining and mineral rights, environmental law, banking and creditor rights, civil litigation, criminal defense, immigration, and family law.