Rauner Has Opportunity to Help Small Businesses

Gov. Rauner tends to avoid discussing the Affordable Care Act (ACA), but he has the opportunity to make a loud statement about his support for Illinois small businesses by signing two bills that would help keep healthcare more affordable for the state’s small firms by bolstering Illinois’ ACA marketplace.

The Illinois General Assembly passed two pieces of legislation this session that would go a long way toward protecting the state’s ACA marketplaces from bad policy favored by the Trump administration.

One bill would limit the duration of short-term insurance plans sold in Illinois to six months and would require these plans to come with warnings about what they do not cover to be read aloud to consumers buying the plans or featured on websites where they’re sold.

This measure is a necessary response to limit problems that would arise from a Trump proposal to expand short-term insurance plans, which the administration would like to extend to 364 days from the current limit of three months. These plans are troubling because they do not have to comply with ACA requirements nor do they have to follow rules that prevent insurers form charging more based on factors like gender.

What’s more, Individuals who would purchase these short-term insurance plans are likely to be younger and healthier, leaving older and sicker workers in the individual marketplace. Authorizing these “junk insurance” plans would create an unbalanced risk pool that disrupts the individual marketplace and raises costs for everyone else who remains in the individual marketplace. The cost of health insurance is a top concern for small business owners, and the proposed changes would be harmful for solo entrepreneurs and small business employees by raising rates for individuals dependent on the individual marketplace—which is where many small business employees and solo entrepreneurs purchase health coverage. In fact, if implemented, these short-term plans are estimated to leave 2.5 million additional people nationwide without minimum essential coverage in 2019.

A second measure would require the General Assembly to approve any state waivers that would impact ACA coverage. The ACA allows states to be exempted from some of the law’s requirements in order for states to try new ideas, but they are potentially problematic because they could be used as a way to legally sidestep ACA provisions and offer weaker coverage. So the General Assembly passed a measure that would prohibit the state from even asking for a federal waiver without approval from lawmakers to insure that the request is made to improve healthcare in Illinois, not to ignore portions of the law that some may not like.

With the ACA under attack in Washington, D.C., states must do all they can to stabilize the marketplaces and protect small firms from rising premiums.

Geraldine Sanchez Aglipay is the Chicago-based Midwest Outreach Manager for Small Business Majority.