Contact us

(831) 722-3541

Contact us

Contact details:

Message:

Your message has been sent successfully. Close this notice.

Commercial Insurance Quote

Coverage Information

Current Coverage Information

Contact details:

Your Quote Form has been sent successfully. Close this notice.

Auto Insurance Quote

Contact details:

Current Coverage Information

Your car:

Your Quote Form has been sent successfully. Close this notice.

Homeowners Insurance Quote

Your house:

Current Coverage Information

Contact details:

Your Quote Form has been sent successfully. Close this notice.

Life Insurance Quote

Life Insurance Details

Current Coverage Information

Contact details:

Your Quote Form has been sent successfully. Close this notice.

Health Insurance Quote

Coverage Information

Current Coverage Information

Contact details:

Your Quote Form has been sent successfully. Close this notice.
10 years ago · by · 0 comments

Obamacare May Reduce Auto Insurance Rates

Scurich Insurance Services, CA, Car accidentA benefit of the Affordable Care Act may be a drop in car insurance premiums as health care providers shoulder more of the treatment costs tied to accidents and injuries, according to a new report from a leading think tank.

The nonprofit Rand Corporation says the rise in the number of people with medical coverage under the ACA, also known as Obamacare, could result in a “modest” drop in claims against auto insurers. In turn, the cost savings could be passed to consumers as insurance companies and state regulators evaluate and refine coverage rates, according to Rand’s report, “How Will the Affordable Care Act Affect Liability Insurance Costs?”

“The Affordable Care Act is unlikely to dramatically affect liability costs, but it may influence small and moderate changes in costs over the next several years,” says David Auerbach, a Rand policy researcher and the study’s lead author. “For example, auto insurers may spend less for treating injuries, while it may cost a bit more to provide physicians with medical malpractice coverage.”

Besides auto insurance rates, expenses tied to homeowners insurance, workers’ compensation and general business liability insurance may also fall once the ACA further takes hold. But on the downside, expenses for malpractice coverage could rise, according to the report.

Obamacare to trim insurance costs by up to 5 percent?

“Researchers say the changes could be as much as 5 percent of costs (for auto, home and the other forms of liability insurance) in some states, but caution there is considerable uncertainty surrounding such estimates,” the study notes.

Auerbach and Rand point out that liability insurers currently reimburse tens of billions of dollars each year for medical care related to car crashes and workplace injuries, among other claims. “For example, auto insurers collectively paid $35 billion for medical costs associated with accidents in 2007, about 2 percent of all U.S. health care costs in that year,” according to Rand.

The reason for a possible jump in malpractice claims faced by doctors and health providers is simple: Rand says that more claims could be filed as more people get medical coverage.

“Insured individuals have more contacts with physicians, make more visits and receive more procedures,” the report says. “Such a shift could drive malpractice costs modestly higher.”

The malpractice figures are already significant. The study points out:

In 2012, nearly 12,000 medical malpractice claims paid on behalf of individual physicians and other providers accounted for $4.3 billion in costs. A substantial additional number of claims were paid on behalf of institutions, such as hospitals, some of which self-insure, that are not included in the $4.3 billion number.

The study was sponsored by Swiss Re, which stresses the powerful effects the ACA may ultimately have on the insurance industry and elsewhere. “Businesses and policymakers need to understand how and why their risk profiles might change as the Affordable Care Act is implemented,” Jayne Plunkett, Swiss Re’s head of casualty reinsurance, said in a statement.

A surge in medical insurance enrollments

In a separate survey, Rand estimated “a net gain of 9.3 million in the number of American adults with health insurance coverage from September 2013 to mid-March 2014.” While noting that any survey has a margin of error, Rand added that its findings didn’t include those who signed up for coverage in late March and early April. That enrollment surge could “dramatically affect” the total figures, Rand said.

Rand estimated that Americans without insurance fell to 15.8 percent, from 20.5 percent.

Of those who secured new medical coverage between September and March, 8.2 million didn’t buy it on the ACA’s federal or state-run exchanges, but through an employer. Rand says the increase was likely because of a drop in unemployment, which opened the door for many to be eligible for workplace plans, and ACA incentives encouraging employees to get coverage.

Rand added that 3.9 million secured health insurance through the exchanges, 36 percent of them previously uninsured. That number was expected to rise as the March and April numbers came in.

In declaring the ACA an unfolding success, the Obama administration recently said that more than 7 million people signed up for coverage through the marketplace exchanges.
Content provided by: http://www.moneytalksnews.com/2014/04/21/obamacare-may-reduce-auto-insurance-rates/#Kqdfh4ZHhsjylE1J.99

Read more

10 years ago · by · 0 comments

Obamacare Premiums Report Shows Low Prices For Uninsured With Wide Variation

The average price for basic health coverage purchased on health insurance exchanges created by President Barack Obama’s health care reform law will be $249 a month, not counting subsidies, in 48 states reviewed by the Department of Health and Human Services, according to a government report published Wednesday.

The health insurance exchanges, marketplaces for uninsured people and consumers who don’t get health benefits from their employers, are scheduled to launch on Oct. 1 for an enrollment period that runs through the end of March for 2014 coverage. This latest analysis of what the health insurance plans will cost comes just six days before people will be able to find out what they’ll actually pay.

“For millions of Americans, these new options will finally make health insurance work within their budget,” Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said during a conference call with reporters Tuesday. Reporters were provided access to the report prior to its publication.

The figures released by the Department of Health and Human Services represent averages and prices will vary widely by geographic location as well as family size, age, tobacco use and income. Even the average price of a so-called bronze plan, designed to cover 60 percent of medical expenses not counting monthly premiums, masks big variation. The average price of the cheapest bronze plan in Minnesota is $144 while in Wyoming, comparable coverage costs $425 on average, not including subsides.

For people who currently are uninsured and who qualify for financial assistance or enrollment in Medicaid, the federal-state health program for the poor, the average prices look to be low: 56 percent of uninsured will be able to get coverage for less than $100 a month per person, Gary Cohen, director of the Center for Consumer Information and Insurance Oversight, said during the conference call.

Read more here.

Scurich Insurance Services, Watsonville, California, Obamacare

Scurich Insurance Services has proudly served the Monterey Bay area since 1924.  Scurich will take care of all of your insurance needs.  Are you a business owner, did you get a new car or maybe you are looking to protect your family in the event of a tragedy?  Give us a call, we can help!

We are located at:

Scurich Insurance Services

320 East Lake Avenue, PO Box 1170
Watsonville, CA 95077-1170
Office:
1-831-722-3541
Toll Free:
1-800-320-3666

Website | Facebook | Blog | LinkedIn

Information provided by:  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/25/obamacare-premiums_n_3984979.html?ir=Impact&utm_campaign=092513&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Alert-impact&utm_content=Title

Read more

11 years ago · by · 0 comments

House GOP launches shutdown battle by voting to defund Obamacare

Washington (CNN) — With one vote on Friday, the Republican-led House launched the latest spending battle in Congress — one that could bring a government shutdown in less than two weeks.

By a 230-189 tally almost strictly on party lines, the House passed a short-term government spending plan that would eliminate all funding for Obamacare.

The measure now goes to the Democratic-led Senate, which is certain to reject the provision that defunds President Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement of his first term.

Even though House Republicans now have voted 42 times to repeal or otherwise undermine Obamacare, Speaker John Boehner and fellow Republicans held a brief victory rally after Friday’s action and challenged the Senate to follow their lead.

“The American people don’t want the government shut down, and they don’t want Obamacare,” the Ohio Republican said to applause and cheers. “The House has listened to the American people. Now it’s time for the United States Senate to listen to them as well.”

In a display of the raw politics of the battle, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia called out Senate Democrats facing re-election next year by name, asking how Sens. Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Mark Begich of Alaska and Kay Hagan of North Carolina will vote on the House proposal.

“It’s up to Senate Democrats to follow House Republicans and show some responsibility,” Cantor said.

Later Friday, Obama accused conservative Republicans of holding the nation hostage by trying to make passing a federal budget and increasing the debt ceiling contingent on defunding health care reforms.

“You don’t have to threaten to blow the whole thing up if you don’t get your way,” Obama said in a campaign-style speech at a Ford plant in the Kansas City, Missouri area, adding that legislators in Washington were focused on politics and “trying to mess with me,” rather than helping the middle class.

In legislative jargon, the House passed a continuing resolution that would keep the government funded for the first 11 weeks of the fiscal year that begins October 1. Without some kind of spending measure by then, parts of the government would have to curtail services or shut down.

Conservatives tie Obamacare to budget talks

The controversy involves the provision demanded by the GOP’s conservative wing and agreed to by Boehner that eliminates all funding for the 2010 health care reforms popularly known as Obamacare.

Approval by the House set in motion a Capitol Hill showdown that will continue through October, when the nation’s debt ceiling must be increased so the government can pay all its bills.

The two-stage process includes the possible government shutdown at the end of the current fiscal year on September 30 if there is no compromise on a spending resolution, followed by a potentially even more rancorous debate over raising the debt ceiling.

Cantor said Friday the House would consider a one-year debt ceiling measure next week that contains other conservative-backed proposals, expected to include postponing implementation of Obamacare for a year and approving the Keystone oil pipeline from Canada.

Obama, however, rejected playing politics with the debt ceiling, which is the limit for how much the federal government can borrow to pay bills it owes.

“This is not a deadbeat nation. We don’t run out on our tab,” the president said, calling even the threat of not raising the debt ceiling “the height of irresponsibility.”

He also made a point of telling the auto workers that raising the debt ceiling “doesn’t cost a dime” and “does not add a penny to our deficits.”

“All it says is, you gotta pay for what Congress already said we’re spending money on,” Obama said, adding that “if you don’t do it, we could have another financial crisis.”

Tea party conservatives who have pledged to fight implementation of Obamacare consider the current budget debate their last major chance to undermine it, because the brunt of the new system takes effect with the start of fiscal year 2014 on October 1.

They demand a halt to funding all programs from the 2010 Affordable Care Act, and they seem indifferent about forcing a government shutdown if that doesn’t happen.

“I will do everything necessary and anything possible to defund Obamacare,” Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas said Thursday, threatening a filibuster and “any procedural means necessary.”

However, more moderate Republicans in the Democratic-led Senate call the defunding effort a waste of time.

Veteran GOP Sen. John McCain of Arizona told CNN on Thursday that because of the chamber’s Democratic majority, “we will not repeal or defund Obamacare” in the Senate “and to think we can is not rational.”

In addition, the White House said Thursday that Obama would veto the House spending resolution defunding Obamacare if it reaches his desk.

An earlier compromise proposed by Boehner and fellow GOP House leaders to their conservative wing would have allowed a symbolic vote on the defunding provision that the Senate would then strip out.

The result would have been what legislators call a “clean” final version that simply extended current levels of government spending for about two months of the new fiscal year, allowing time for further negotiations on the debt ceiling.

However, conservative opposition to the compromise made Boehner agree to a tougher version that made overall government funding contingent on eliminating money for Obamacare.

Moderate Republicans question the strategy, but fear a right-wing backlash in the 2014 primaries if they go against the conservative wing.

In reference to the divisions in the House, McCain said it is “pretty obvious that (Boehner) has great difficulties within his own conference.”

On the House floor on Friday, legislators warned of the serious consequences of a government shutdown. The last shutdown, which occurred during the Clinton administration more than 17 years ago, comprised a total of 28 days and cost the nation more than $1 billion, according to congressional researchers.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California said the intent of the Republican measure is to shut down the government, calling it a “wolf in wolf’s clothing.”

GOP Rep. Harold Rogers of Kentucky, who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, said “a government shutdown is a political game in which everyone loses.”

“It shirks one of our most basic duties as members of Congress and it puts our national security at stake,” he added.

Republicans said the House vote showed bipartisan support for defunding Obamacare because two Democrats backed the GOP resolution — Reps. Jim Matheson of Utah and Mike McIntyre of North Carolina.

Meanwhile, Rep. Scott Rigell of Virginia was the lone Republican to break ranks with his caucus by voting against it.

In the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada made clear on Thursday that any plan to defund Obamacare would be dead on arrival. Instead, the Senate is expected to strip the measure of all provisions defunding Obamacare and send it back to the House.

“They’re simply postponing an inevitable choice they must face,” Reid said of House Republicans.

Boehner would then have to decide whether to put it to a vote, even though that could undermine his already weakened leadership position by having the measure pass with only a few dozen moderate Republicans joining Democrats in support.

If he refuses to bring the Senate version to the floor for a vote, a shutdown would ensue.

“Will he act as the captain of the entire House of Representatives or remain a captive of his right wing Republican mates?” asked Democratic Rep. Sander Levin of Michigan. “Will he, as he acts, worry mainly about the risk to his speakership or the risk to our entire nation? House Republicans taking the ship over the cliff would take the nation’s economic well-being with it.”

Polls showing a decrease in public support for the health care reforms embolden the Republican stance. Meanwhile, Democratic resolve is bolstered by surveys showing most people oppose a government shutdown and more would blame Republicans if it happens.

Shutdown scenario

Voices across the political spectrum warn against a shutdown, including Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and Republican strategist Karl Rove.

“Even the defund strategy’s authors say they don’t want a government shutdown. But their approach means we’ll get one,” Rove argued in an op-ed published Thursday by the Wall Street Journal.

 Scurich Insurance Services, Watsonville, California, Defund Obamacare

Scurich Insurance Services has proudly served the Monterey Bay area since 1924.  Scurich will take care of all of your insurance needs.  Are you a business owner, did you get a new car or maybe you are looking to protect your family in the event of a tragedy?  Give us a call, we can help!

We are located at:

Scurich Insurance Services

320 East Lake Avenue, PO Box 1170
Watsonville, CA 95077-1170
Office:
1-831-722-3541
Toll Free:
1-800-320-3666

Website | Facebook | Blog | LinkedIn

Information provided by:  http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/20/politics/congress-spending-showdown/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Read more

11 years ago · by · 0 comments

Technical snafus confuse charges for Obamacare plans

(Reuters) – Technical glitches still plague the display of new healthcare plans to be offered to millions of uninsured Americans starting in 26 days, including how medical charges and deductibles are listed, industry officials say.

Health insurers planning to sell policies to people who are currently uninsured, under President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform, say they expect the problems will be remedied by October 1, when consumers will be able to buy health insurance from state exchanges. On Wednesday, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the lead Obamacare agency, said it was on schedule to sign final agreements with insurers between September 9 and September 11, allowing them to sell specific policies on the exchanges.

“Our timeline remains the same,” said CMS in a statement, “and we are working to ensure that any issues are resolved before open enrollment.”

Although the signing of agreements with insurers is a mere two days behind the original schedule, it led to speculation that there were serious technical snags. Late last week a conference call between the government’s information technology contractors and insurance industry representatives revealed some of those problems, which centered on how information about health plans, such as charges for medical claims and deductibles, was displayed on a “preview” website, according to people with knowledge of the call.

An official from Florida Blue, a large insurer, was concerned that a health policy it plans to sell on the state’s exchange would mislead customers: The preview website showed no charge at all for some medical services, rather than no charge after a deductible is met.

An Aetna staffer was frustrated that policies the company once intended to sell in Ohio, but withdrew, were still showing up in the preview site. Delta Dental of Wyoming reported that its plan was showing zero deductible in policies that cover parents plus children.

“That will be misleading if it pops up as a zero deductible and will put us on the hook if they go to the dentist” and expect not to pay a deductible, a Delta Dental staffer said on the call, according to a participant. “We’re concerned about that.”

The insurance exchanges, the heart of Obama’s Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, will allow residents of each state to seek subsidized health coverage. The government aims to sign up 7 million people in the first year. That number is expected to grow to 22 million in 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Carriers were sanguine the snafus would get addressed.

“We knew there would be IT issues going in,” said Kerry Hall, chief executive of Delta Dental of Wyoming, in an interview. “We made a business decision to be in the exchange for the people of Wyoming, and we’ve very optimistic that CMS will get this resolved.”

Aetna spokesman Matt Wiggin said his company was also confident the problems would be fixed.

IT experts said the problems should be familiar to anyone who has had to deal with an elaborate tech rollout at work, including the sometimes unsatisfying interaction with a dedicated “help desk.”

“It’s classic,” said Rick Howard of technology consultant Gartner, which is not an exchange contractor. “When you have these large IT projects, it comes down to not having enough time to prioritize issues based on severity. If you go live with this knowing you have glitches, consumers may make decisions based on false information.”

ONLINE ONSLAUGHT

For months it has been clear that IT would be both the backbone and the Achilles heel of the Obamacare exchanges. Although people will be able to buy health coverage by phone and through paper applications, most are expected to do so online. Almost everyone will seek information for policies at the website being created for their state’s exchange.

As a result, if any issue could delay the start of the six-month open-enrollment period next month, experts have said, tech glitches would be it. A report last month by the inspector general at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services warned that HHS was months behind the schedule it originally set in testing IT security.

The problems in displaying insurance information affect exchanges being built by the federal government in 34 states. Only some states were discussed on the IT conference call.

Another 16 states and the District of Columbia are responsible for their own exchanges. Among those, Oregon has said it would limit access to its exchange to residents working with an insurance broker or a state-trained “navigator” during the first few weeks of October to iron out any technical bugs. California is considering a similar approach.

Administration officials last week would not specify what IT or other issues caused HHS to push back the deadline for final approval of policies. But the IT call last Friday underlined the frustration of some carriers as they race to prepare for the launch.

Some insurance company representatives said they had asked repeatedly for errors to be corrected and still have numerous outstanding requests with the exchange help desk, according to people with knowledge of the discussion. Others said incorrect rates for certain services were on display.

After some two hours of such complaints, a federal IT representative on the call said: “I hear your frustration, and we’re doing all we can.”

Contact Scurich Insurance Services to see how we can help.

Scurich Insurance

Scurich Insurance Services has proudly served the Monterey Bay area since 1924.  Scurich will take care of all of your insurance needs.  Are you a business owner, did you get a new car or maybe you are looking to protect your family in the event of a tragedy?  Give us a call, we can help!

We are located at:

Scurich Insurance Services

320 East Lake Avenue, PO Box 1170
Watsonville, CA 95077-1170
Office: 1-831-722-3541
Toll Free: 1-800-320-3666

Information provided by:  http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/09/05/us-usa-healthcare-technology-idUSBRE98405E20130905

Read more

11 years ago · by · 0 comments

Obamacare Delay? What Obamacare Delay?

When the Obama administration said it would delay the health reform law’s requirement that employers insure their workers or face a fine, its critics began to wonder what else might get delayed. The law’s big new piece of infrastructure—the online insurance marketplaces scheduled to go live Oct. 1—involves coordinating a massive trove of information technology and a ton of personnel training. So the doubters, reveling in the recent bad news, have begun casting doubt on the whole enterprise.

Not so fast. The employer mandate was one of many ancillary provisions—not critical to Obamacare’s central mission—that the administration has jettisoned in its race to build the exchanges in time. But signing people up for new insurance plans and giving them tax credits to do so is the main idea. It will take a major calamity for the administration to delay this crucial piece of the law. The exchanges may not work smoothly in the early months, but the administration will hit the deadline, says Dan Schuyler, a director at Leavitt Partners, a consultancy helping states build their exchanges. “Worst-case scenario: October 1, all exchanges open up.”

Administration officials are repeating earlier promises of an on-time launch. “The marketplaces will be ready,” Health and Human Services spokeswoman Joanne Peters said Thursday in a typical statement. “We are on schedule with the testing that began in October 2012. Any discussion to the contrary is pure speculation.” And while administration officials didn’t hint at problems with the employer system until the surprise delay, the marketplaces are different. The core goal of the Affordable Care Act is to bring health insurance to those who don’t have it, and the law’s long-term success will be judged on how many new people get covered. That’s a reality with both practical and political consequences, and the people setting it up know that. “There will be a Web portal, and there will be call centers, and they will enroll people in products and put them on tax credits,” says Cindy Gillespie, senior managing director at McKenna Long & Aldridge. “That’s going to happen. How smoothly the eligibility process works? Who knows. But it will be made to work.”

Building the exchanges has proven a heavy lift. To make them work, the federal government needs not only a consumer-facing website and call centers stocked with customer-service representatives in 34 states but also a brand-new, complex IT structure to make the system work across the country. The law says that when an applicant enters her information online, various federal agencies must validate her income, citizenship status, residency, and eligibility for Medicaid. The portal must also connect to the Veterans Administration, the Defense Department, the Office of Personnel Management, and the Peace Corps. Plus, it needs to communicate with every health plan selling insurance in each state.

It’s still unclear just how ready these digital systems will be on Day One and how much is already being done to mitigate the inevitable glitches. The administration has remained tight-lipped about the operational details. That has frustrated states and insurers, both of which need to connect to the new under-construction system. “From where I sit, it’s hard to monitor their progress on the data hub, because it is a black box until it either works or doesn’t work,” says Dan Mendelson, CEO of Avalere Health and a former official at the Office of Management and Budget.

Indeed, a Government Accountability Office report last month said that while HHS had been hitting internal IT milestones, the volume of work to be completed was too large for GAO to assess the likelihood that systems would work in time. “Whether … contingency planning will assure the timely and smooth implementation of the exchanges by October 2013 cannot yet be determined,” according to the report. States and health plans have begun testing some data exchange with the federal hub. But states have been testing “clean” data, meaning that every name is spelled perfectly and every Social Security number is entered correctly. Ultimately, the data hub will need to identify people and their information even with typos and errors.

Still, while the public deadline is Oct. 1, HHS and its contractors will realistically have a little extra time to fix IT problems. The insurance plans won’t go live until January, leaving a cushion if parts of the system have to default to paper, or if delays arise in processing applications. Cheryl Smith, a senior practitioner at Deloitte, worked on the Utah small-business health exchange, which launched in 2009. Before the open-enrollment deadline, “I had holes in my stomach,” she says. “We got to that day and I realized, this is not really the launch.” As long as the website goes live in October and people have new insurance plans in January, the administration will have kept its key promises.

In the meantime, administration officials and their allies are working to get the word out about the new systems. HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told reporters this week she would be in a new city nearly every week this summer explaining the exchanges. Television ads are running, and smaller, targeted outreach efforts have launched. That’s a big job, too, because most people without insurance don’t know what Obamacare offers them. The better these outreach efforts work, the greater the imperative to launch on time.

Scurich Insurance Services

Scurich Insurance Services has proudly served the Monterey Bay area since 1924.  Scurich will take care of all of your insurance needs.  Are you a business owner, did you get a new car or maybe you are looking to protect your family in the event of a tragedy?  Give us a call, we can help!

We are located at:

Scurich Insurance Services

320 East Lake Avenue, PO Box 1170
Watsonville, CA 95077-1170
Office: 1-831-722-3541
Toll Free: 1-800-320-3666

Information provided by:  http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/obamacare-delay-what-obamacare-delay-20130711

Read more

11 years ago · by · 0 comments

Businesses claim Obamacare has forced them to cut employee hours

Employers around the country, from fast-food franchises to colleges, have told NBC News that they will be cutting workers’ hours below 30 a week because they can’t afford to offer the health insurance mandated by the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

“To tell somebody that you’ve got to decrease their hours because of a law passed in Washington is very frustrating to me,” said Loren Goodridge, who owns 21 Subway franchises, including a restaurant in Kennebunk. “I know the impact I’m having on some of my employees.”

Goodridge said he’s cutting the hours of 50 workers to no more than 29 a week so he won’t trigger the provision in the new health care law that requires employers to offer coverage to employees who work 30 hours or more per week. The provision takes effect in 16 months.

Luke Perfect, who has worked at Goodridge’s Kennebunk Subway for more than a decade, said it was “horrible” to learn he was among the employees whose hours would be limited, and that it would be a financial hardship. “I’m barely scraping by with overtime,” he said.

The White House dismisses such examples as “anecdotal.” Jason Furman, chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisors, said, “We are seeing no systematic evidence that the Affordable Care Act is having an adverse impact on job growth or the number of hours employees are working. … [S]ince the ACA became law, nearly 90 percent of the gain in employment has been in full-time positions.”

But the president of an influential union that supports Obamacare said the White House is wrong.

“It IS happening,” insisted Joseph Hansen, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers union, which has 1.2 million members.  “Wait a year. You’ll see tremendous impact as workers have their hours reduced and their incomes reduced. The facts are already starting to show up. Their statistics, I think, are a little behind the time.”

In a letter to Democratic leaders on Capitol Hill, Hansen joined other labor chieftains in warning that the ACA as presently written could “destroy the foundation of the 40-hour work week that is the backbone of the middle class.”

NBC News spoke with almost 20 small businesses and other entities from Maine to California, and almost all said that because of the new law they’d be cutting back hours for some employees – an unintended consequence of the new law.

At St. Petersburg College, a public university in Florida where most of the faculty is part-time, 250 have had their hours reduced for the fall term because the college said it can’t afford to offer them health insurance.

St Petersburg’s president, Dr. Bill Law, said providing health care for the 250 adjunct professors would cost more than $777,000 dollars a year. “The cost associated with making a part-timer benefits-eligible really is not available to us as a public college,” said Law.

“I don’t think anyone [passed the law] so they could make our life worse,” said Law. “They did it because people need access to health care.”

Part-time math professor Tracey Sullivan said she will lose half her income because of the cuts.

“I never thought it would impact me directly,” said Sullivan. “I was stunned when I got the email…I love teaching at St. Pete College but that is a significant cut.”

Many businesses are reluctant to talk about cutting hours for fear the public will view them as stingy or uncaring about their workers. But Goodridge said that many small businesses have very small profit margins and that while he already provides health insurance to senior employees, offering health insurance to many more workers would require him to pass a significant price increase on to his customers.

“The consumer only has so much money in their pocket,” he said. “I just don’t feel, knowing my customers and knowing my business, now is the time to be raising prices.”

In July, the administration announced that it had delayed implementation of the “employer mandate,” which was supposed to take effect on Jan. 1. Now businesses with more than 50 workers will not be penalized for failing to offer insurance to full-time employees until Jan. 1, 2015.

Goodridge has given his Subway employees a reprieve until he hears more from the administration, but still plans to make cutbacks before the mandate kicks in. And other businesses that had already planned cuts have not necessarily delayed them. St. Petersburg college officials said they don’t want to undo the cuts they’ve already made only to revisit them next year.

While the small businesses and the union agree there’s a problem, they disagree about the appropriate solution.

Some businesses want to raise the threshold to 40 hours. But Hansen said 40 hours would be a “gift to employers” that would simply allow them to continue to skirt the law by cutting workers off at 39 hours. Instead, Hansen and other union leaders have proposed lowering the threshold to 20 hours. They have also objected publicly to a tax provision of the ACA that impacts the health plans they already offer to some union members.

“We still support the act,” said Hansen. “It does an awful lot of good things. We just want the administration and Congress, if they can, to fix it.”

Scurich Insurance

Scurich Insurance Services has proudly served the Monterey Bay area since 1924.  Scurich will take care of all of your insurance needs.  Are you a business owner, did you get a new car or maybe you are looking to protect your family in the event of a tragedy?  Give us a call, we can help!

We are located at:

Scurich Insurance Services

320 East Lake Avenue, PO Box 1170
Watsonville, CA 95077-1170
Office:
1-831-722-3541
Toll Free:
1-800-320-3666

Information provided by:  http://investigations.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/13/.UgsB7W6O8RU.email

By Lisa Myers and Carroll Ann Mears

Read more

Company information

Scurich Insurance Services
Phone: (831) 661-5697
Fax: (831) 661-5741

Physical:
783 Rio Del Mar Blvd., Suite7,
Aptos, Ca 95003-4700

Mailing:
PO Box 1170
Watsonville, CA 95077-1170

Contact details

E-mail address:
[email protected]

(831) 661-5697

Available 8:30am - 5:00pm