In an effort to increase understanding of the tax credit and grandfathering provisions of healthcare reform, WellPoint Inc. recently launched two new online tools to help business owners understand the implications of these provisions with their current health plan.
According to Marilyn McCullough, WellPoint's vice president of marketing, the introduction of the tools is in reaction to their customers who have inundated the company with questions since the passage of the Affordable Care Act earlier this year.
“Ever since the bill has been passed there is almost an insatiable appetite for information from our employer customers and brokers asking us, 'What does this mean? What should we be doing?’ Should we be grandfathering our not?’” McCullough said. “That is just one of the numerous changes that we have been getting questions about.”
The interactive grandfathering tool walks users through an easy interview process that both provides information about what grandfathering is as well as what the implications are to businesses who choose to either grandfather their plan or not.
"The grandfathering tool is another part of our commitment to help make health care reform work," Mark Wagar, president and CEO, Empire BlueCross BlueShield, one of WellPoint’s affiliated health plans. "This tool can help businesses quickly and easily determine a course of action based on their current plan in an easy to use and understandable tool."
For the small business tax calculator and tax content, WellPoint is using the tool developed by the Tax Institute at H&R Block. According to McCullough, the tool was first employed by another Blue Cross operation in Kansas City. “Since we were going to do something similar, we felt there was no need to recreate the wheel,” she said.
“So we approached them about extending the partnership to WellPoint.”
The main purpose of the tax tool is for companies to determine whether or not they qualify for tax credits under health reform based on the size of the company, its number of employees, average wages and total cost of their current health plan.
“The credits gets progressively greater over the years,” McCullough added. “The tool is designed specifically to determine if they could get the credit and how would it impact their premium costs based on what they are paying today.”
Further, she noted that many smaller businesses today are struggling financially and are considering dropping health coverage as a means of helping the bottom line. The tool may, for these companies, show how the credits can help employers get over that hump and retain their plans. There is also potential for companies that don’t currently offer health benefits to employees to see how qualifying for the tax credits may make offering coverage more affordable.
Because the tool provides specific dollars and cents answers based on the individual characteristics of each company, brokers and business owners alike are using the tool help with re-enrollment decisions.
That exactly what Brad Schwartz, president of WestCoast Business solutions found when using the tool.
“These tools can help small businesses like ours better understand the changes associated with health care reform and to take advantage of the available credits and other provisions designed to improve the affordability of health care,” he said. “These interactive tools are clearly going to save us time and money.”
Apparently, Schwartz isn’t alone. According to McCollough, even though the company at first only communicated their availability to its brokers and the businesses who use its plans, the webpage where the tools reside recorded more than 20,000 visits in the first two weeks of going live.
WellPoint is the nation's largest health benefits company; its health plans are offered in 14 states, with more than 33 million members in its affiliated plans, and a total of more than 69 million individuals served through all subsidiaries. Both the granfathering and tax tools are available at www.wellpoint.com/healthcarereform.
