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Healthcare Reform to End

Oberai, 62, works with at-risk pregnant women for a nonprofit agency in Port Charlotte, Florida. The health insurance choices for workers like Oberai will change dramatically next year with final implementation of national healthcare reform. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) prohibits insurers from turning away applicants for pre-existing conditions, and that's expected to turn the key for workers facing "job lock" - people who need to leave their jobs but can't afford to lose healthcare coverage. Nearly half (47 percent) of workers retire earlier than planned, and 55 percent cite a health or disability issue as the cause, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute. "I've talked with a lot of people who need to leave their jobs because of health problems - but they need the health insurance," says Kathleen Stoll, director of health policy for Families USA, a nonprofit health care advocacy group. A recent study by the Urban Institute's Health Policy Center and Georgetown University's Health Policy Institute forecast that health reform will boost the number of self-employed people by 1.5 million. Older workers who want to jump ship also will benefit from provisions of the ACA designed to control the cost of insurance purchased in new state health insurance exchanges - markets where Americans will be able to shop for a healthcare plan, comparing benefits and prices. Insurers are permitted to set premium rates three times higher for applicants over the age of 50. Tax credits are available to families with incomes between 100 percent and 400 percent of the federally-defined poverty guideline. The law also offers reduced copayments and deductibles for families up to 250 percent of the poverty level. How does that compare with existing group coverage offered by employers? Last year, the average worker contribution for an individual policy was $951, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. For workers buying family coverage, the average contribution was $4,316. In the exchanges, Kaiser estimates that a household with two 55-year-old adults and 2014 income of $50,000 would pay $4,750 for a "silver" plan, which covers 70 percent of healthcare costs. Are the workers mostly older?

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