The landmark legislation known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), signed into law in 2010, affects a wide range of institutions in the United States in some way. It imposes healthcare-related requirements on health plans, health insurers, and employers.
In addition to imposing various tax increases to increase revenue, the PPACA uses a carrot-and-stick approach to ensure compliance with its provisions, offering tax credits for compliance and imposing tax penalties for non-compliance. This course will review the principal provisions of the law and will examine its tax impact on individuals and businesses.
In so doing, it will consider the:
- Coverage-related provisions of the PPACA addressing
- Plan grandfathering pursuant to which health coverage in force at the time of the law’s passage may be continued
- The prohibition of pre-existing condition exclusions
- The proscription of lifetime and annual benefit limits
- The limitation of health coverage rescissions
- The requirement for certain patient protections
- The requirement that plans covering children extend child coverage until age 26
- Tax credits available to small businesses to encourage them to sponsor employee health plans
- Shared responsibility for certain large employers to provide employee health coverage and the tax penalties imposed for noncompliance
- Various personal income tax changes affecting taxpayers
- Tax credits authorized to help individuals maintain minimum essential coverage.
Learning Objectives
Upon completion of this course, you should be able to:
- List the principal healthcare provisions of the PPACA
- Identify the tax credits for which small businesses may be eligible when sponsoring employee health plans
- Recognize the shared responsibility requirements for applicable large employers regarding employee health coverage
- Compute the tax penalties imposed under the PPACA for a large employer’s failure to meet the applicable shared responsibility requirements
- Calculate the tax credits designed to help ensure that individuals are able to maintain minimum essential coverage.