Hi, this is Josh Stailey from The Pursuit Group. We have had a number of questions lately about the impact of the Healthcare Reform Initiative from last year. It had a big storm and fury and now sort of quieted down and people saying: “Well what’s happening? Where is it? What is going on with it?” The truth is that not a heck of a lot is happening this year or even next year. In fact, in 2012 almost nothing new kicks in. This year, 2011, what kicked in were some provisions that deny the ability to deny coverage to people, certain credits for small businesses that want to go to health care and an interesting requirement that is starting this year. Your employees must have the cost of their healthcare put on the W2, so that they see that expense.

2013 is where some of the more critical things begin to start and that is where you’re going to start having some of the insurance pools actually form where you may end up having to decide whether to provide or continue to provide or to withdraw healthcare coverage and depending on what you choose to do you may actually get a little tax assistance or you may actually pay a penalty for doing it. There is a lot of question right now as to which way that is going to go and we’ve heard debate in both directions. I think the truth is nobody really knows for sure what is happening with that.

2014 and on things expand significantly from that point and you’ll start seeing more and more of the carrot and stick approaches to bringing more and more people into the healthcare. Medicare itself will expand and help cover some of that uncovered area. I think there are a couple of things that you need to keep in mind. First of all, despite any prediction you hear, most of those are political in mind and nothing else. The healthcare no one can really predict what is going to happen yet with healthcare and it’s going to difficult to get even a few months of head start on what is likely to happen. People just don’t know. There was a recent McKenzie survey that came out that caused a considerable amount of controversy and was in some ways discredited after it came out. So the answer is who knows right now with that.

The phase in is over 10 years, so keep in mind that a lot of this will not be happening even though you may hear about some of it for 4 or 5 or 6 years into the future even now. And finally is that there are going to be a myriad of challenges and sooner or later this thing is going to actually get to the Supreme Court and they substantively affirm or change or toss out the entire bill or law in one way or another. It’s very hard to tell at this point, so as a business you need to prepare by learning what your insurance options are through your insurer to get a sense of where you’re costs are going to go. Look at private insurance and see where that is taking you and then make your decisions accordingly. It won’t be easy and it probably isn’t going to be predictable, but it’s one of those things that we get into as businesses and we get to live with.

This is Josh Stailey. Thanks for listening. We’ll talk to you next time.

About Josh

Our friend and contributor Josh Stailey passed away unexpectedly on September 10, 2011. We have valued his expertise and willingness to share his insights with us. We discussed the appropriateness of sharing content he provided before his death with his business partners at The Pursuit Group and they agreed sharing his expertise was a fitting tribute to Josh.

Josh Stailey was a 40-year veteran of the marketing and sales wars, a journalism-trained professional who understood the role of information and technology in today’s business world. A consultant and writer, he was a founding partner of The Pursuit Group, which specializes in designing and implementing demand-generation systems for small- and medium-sized businesses. He has also consulted with Fortune 500 companies on customer experience management and content system design.