Open Enrollment Period

Many employers of large corporations have utilized the last two months of each year to offer open enrollment period insurance to their full-time employees and some to their part-time employees. The stress levels and anger, on the part of the employees are heard loud and clear because of the confusion of what an affordable health insurance coverage is. Now, the dust begins to settle and the employer can once again pay attention to trying to keep the business productive and above water.

Employees had the opportunity to decide which type of open enrollment period health insurance they wanted to enroll their families in and the new insurance policies are now in effect. Every family is trying to translate all the legal language to find out what they are covered for and what services are being discontinued. Everyone is paying more and some families will need to decide if the new form of insurance is even worth the sacrifice.

Individuals are not the only ones who are panicked and waiting for the next shoe to drop. This debacle with universal health care is a very rough time for all citizens and with the health reform bill; many changes are hurting individuals and businesses alike. Since employees are paid in a variety of ways, the insurance ripple coupled with additional taxes is going to begin slowly to ripple across the country.

Some employees are paid weekly, bi-weekly, bi-monthly, and monthly so it will take a little time for the government-run individual health insurance reforms to be felt throughout the country. How many individuals will conclude that it would be better to forfeit the insurance from their employer group insurance because the cost is eating into disposable cash they need to pay their rent, mortgage, and a host of other expenses?

Employers are very unhappy about the prospects of what the future holds now that the health reform bill is beginning to take hold, but their only alternative is to cancel the current insurance.

This will cause every employee to decide for him or herself what he or she wants to do. What happens when the employer is unable to afford the lowest health insurance quotes for his or her employees?

Will this cause an avalanche of discontented individuals? We still have a few years to iron out all the undesirable facts that are included with the health reform bill. Will it be accomplished in time before January 2014 arrives? Much will depend on several factors such as what Congress decides to do and how the many lawsuits from the states evolve.