Small Business and Self-Employed

Remember who fought for workers and helped establish the "Middle Class"!

 ENOUGH -- Why I believe so strongly in the Affordable Care Act.

You can skip my personal story and go directly to:

Five Ways the Affordable Care Act Helps America’s Small Businesses  

Published by the US Small Business Administration    Originally by Ari Matusiak, special assistant to the President & director of private sector engagement and first appeared at Whitehouse.gov on August 14, 2013.

http://www.sba.gov/community/blogs/five-ways-affordable-care-act-helps-america%E2%80%99s-small-businesses

Down and Personal
Several years ago I owned a real estate brokerage, I was a self-employed Realtor with a family and several small children.  Looking out for the family health was a problem with the types of illness falling on young families.
Shopping around for health insurance we found, expensive programs with lots of limits.  At the time my office employed several sales people and a couple staff employees.  None of us had any kind of health insurance, a couple of salesman had wife's that worked and their jobs provided for them, but the majority of us had nothing.
At the same time I was serving in the Oregon Legislature and one of the fellows that was a lobbyist happened to live in my legislative district.  He was the legislative frontline for Kaiser a major HMO on the West Coast.

{Health maintenance organization (HMO)   is an organization that provides or arranges managed care for health insurance, self-funded health care benefit plans.}
Henry J. Kaiser came to Portland building ships, he was an American industrialist who became known as the father of modern American shipbuilding. He established the Kaiser Shipyard which built Liberty ships during World War II, after which he formed Kaiser Aluminum and Kaiser Steel. Kaiser organized Kaiser Permanente health care for his workers and their families. 

At different times he would contact me and visit me at my real estate office, after all that is what lobbyist do, only he happened to be a voter in my district also. 
During one of my conversations with him, I mentioned the need for some kind of health insurance for my family and a couple of the sales staff members.  He indicated he would have someone from the group sales department contact me about health insurance coverage.

We found we could form a small group plan, giving us full health coverage, major benefits and reasonable cost with as few as ten people.  We became the first real estate office in Portland to have health insurance for our employees.  As an inducement for the the staff to join I paid a small portion of the cost and acted as the "banker" for the group.

At last a health plan for my family and something for the office staff at the same time. Not only did Kaiser have several health clinics around Portland but a major hospital too.  It worked out well for our family and the group for several years before I sold the brokerage and moved to Arizona.  Four kids, four horses and year around weather we could enjoy family living outdoors.  Believe me, Oregon is beautiful green with lakes and the Pacific Ocean,  but after 41 years of rain, snow and cold it was time to enjoy some sunshine.  Our new home in Gilbert, Arizona had air conditioning and getting four active growing kids to shut the doors was a major task in itself.  The kitchen door and the sliding family room doors opened to the patio and the swimming pool, it was a constant battle keeping the doors closed the heat and the flies out.  Remember, four horses pastured out back also.

Only when you face doctor office visits, childhood health needs without any type of health insurance do you fully appreciate the need for some type of health care coverage.  My only last word to any seniors out there on the Republican Tea Party Picket Lines with Medicare, you got yours, now halt the protests and encourage everyone to join OBAMACARE come October 1.   It's called sharing!

Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) Soon at a Store Near You

As the time for Open Enrollments approach more and more is being written about the Affordable Care Act.  Check out the following links.

https://www.healthcare.gov/    From "Business USA", a web site provided by the US Government.

https://www.healthcare.gov/small-businesses/   This provided by the US Small Business Administration.

{The Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) is a new way to buy high-quality health insurance for your employees.}

Blue Cross reaches out over insurance law changes

Blue Cross Blue Shield leading push among health insurers to gain customers through new law.

MORRISVILLE, N.C. (AP) -- Just down from the Target and Gander Mountain big-box stores and between a nail salon and dental office, North Carolina's largest health insurer opened its first retail store.
It has some exercise offerings — step aerobics classes and stationary bike workouts — but for now, its main product is providing in-person information about changes coming in October with the health insurance overhaul law.
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina is opening half a dozen of these offices in strip malls statewide to first educate and then, starting in October, enroll consumers shopping for coverage because of the federal Affordable Care Act, also known as "Obamacare." Blue Cross affiliates in Florida and Pennsylvania have had similar stores open for years.

The North Carolina company also hauls an air-conditioned showroom trailer to fairs and farmers markets to reach out to the estimated 600,000 people who will be newly shopping for individual policies — some of them subsidized by the government for consumers who might have trouble affording a policy. Many of the individual policies will be sold on a statewide Internet marketplace designed to make buying coverage comparable to finding a hotel room or rental car.

As people who have been uninsured or had their coverage provided by employers start shopping around, BCBSNC is reaching out like never before to expand on its 375,000 insurance policies for individuals, marketing director Bruce Allen said. The goal is explaining the federal law, which requires everyone to have coverage or pay a fine and subsidizes many middle-class consumers who might otherwise not be able to afford policies on their own. The law also prohibits insurers from rejecting customers who have pre-existing health conditions.
"There's a big segment of the population that really wants to talk to someone face to face about it," Allen said. "It's a new market that's entering that doesn't have health insurance, never had it, and really needs kind of that step-by-step walk-through to understand a really critical decision for them to make."
Across the country, Blue Cross companies are among the health insurers most aggressive in reaching out to build consumer trust and capture their spending on policies. Spots for a broad new print, television and online advertising campaign are multiplying. Meetings with civic organizations community groups, and religious institutions are taking place from Vermont to Texas. The North Carolina company has rented movie theaters and invited guests to watch first-run films, with the addition of a 15-minute ad explaining the Affordable Care Act and laptop-ready staffers in the lobby offering individual guidance on the law.
The Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, the umbrella organization for the country's 38 Blue Cross companies, launched a campaign last month with the Walgreen Co. drugstore chain, with signs and brochures in about 8,000 stores.
WellPoint, the largest operator of Blue Cross Blue Shield health plans, is teaming up with Spanish-language TV and radio network Univision in California, New York, Colorado and Georgia for meetings, broadcast advertisements, and newscast segments describing what coverage means and how to buy insurance on an online exchange.
Blue Cross Blue Shield companies already are some of the country's biggest sellers of health insurance policies for individuals. Seven Blue Cross companies, including North Carolina's, were among the top 10 at the end of 2011, according to Atlantic Information Services Inc., which specializes in health industry data and news.
"For other insurers, the majority of their experience is in the employer-provided market, so they don't know the individual market as well and are unsure whether this will be profitable, so they're moving very carefully," said David Ridley, director of the health sector management program at Duke University's Fuqua business school. "In contrast, Blue Cross Blue Shield — with their experience in the individual market, its experience interacting with government as the insurer of last resort — is moving much more aggressively and creatively."
Outside the Blue Cross Blue Shield world, Humana Inc. has signaled plans to station representatives in grocery stores and pharmacies in the 14 states where its policies will be sold on online insurance marketplaces. Pittsburgh-based UPMC Health Plan has set up kiosks in six western Pennsylvania malls to reach insurance consumers with questions, and it launched a computer application in an effort to offer a fun way to understand the details of the law and its polices.
Spokesmen for Assurant Health and Aetna described no novel marketing twists tied to the upcoming changes.
Government, too, is ramping up efforts to reach the working poor, young people and others without health coverage. President Barack Obama's administration and many states are launching campaigns this summer to get the word out. Grassroots organizers are recruiting pastors, barbers and mothers to convey the message. In some neighborhoods, volunteers organized by a coalition of health companies and advocates hand out brochures.
But any company marketing efforts come as most Americans are confused or uninformed about what the new health insurance law means to them. Only about one in five had heard about the health insurance marketplaces as of June, according to a poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation.
"There is a lot of misinformation out there. One of the things that we hear often is that I have to go buy a government plan on the marketplace," Allen said. "We spend a lot of time explaining to people, 'You're going to buy a private insurance plan. There is no government plan.' "
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Sen. Harry Reid: Obamacare 'Absolutely' A Step Toward A Single-Payer System

When I speak to conservatives about health care policy, I’m often asked the question: “Do you think that Obamacare is secretly a step toward single-payer health care?” I always explain that, while progressives may want single-payer, I don’t think that Obamacare is deliberately designed to bring about that outcome. Well, yesterday on PBS’ Nevada Week In Review, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.) was asked whether his goal was to move Obamacare to a single-payer system. His answer? “Yes, yes. Absolutely, yes.”

Many Progressives say, "That's the best news ever, from Harry Reid."