We believe that for our auto repair shop to produce high quality car repairs and service it is essential that we have great employees. Hiring, training and retaining those employees is key to our success in producing high quality auto repairs.
To hire and retain great employees, we need to make sure they stay healthy and happy, and that means providing our staff with an employment package that includes health insurance. Over the past several years this was becoming quite a challenge because rates had been going up anywhere from 10 to 20 percent. When the affordable care act (ACA) became law two years ago many business organizations predicted a big 20 to 30 percent jump in rates.
If that had happened here at BA Auto Care, it would have made providing health insurance a big challenge because a raise of 30% would have translated to an extra $20,000 a year. We would have had to choose between increasing our labor rate $2 an hour or reducing coverage for our employees. Neither of those options would have been good for our customers.
Well, we are pleased to report that the provisions in the ACA have led to a decrease in our rates of 6%!!!! The new law also means our employees receive a preventive care benefit with no co-payment.
It is great that both our employees and our customers have benefited from the health care reform law!
To help to ensure that this benefit doesn’t go away I traveled with my daughter, our general manager Sandi Weaver, and her son Lucas to Capitol Hill to for a press conference to let people know how the ACA directly helps businesses like ours and their customers. We’ve included the video link to the press conference below. The introduction to our segment starts about 12 minutes into the video, and my piece runs from about 13:00 to 16:30.
The video is 45 minutes long, but if you want to know more about how the ACA is helping ordinary Americans you’ll want to watch the whole segment. It highlights some of the key benefits of the health care reform legislation including:
- Closing the Medicare donut hole and helping to reduce the cost of care for many seniors.
- Making health insurance costs more affordable for small businesses and their employees.
- Ending discrimination against people with pre-existing conditions.
- Allowing parents to keep children on their health insurance policy up to age 26.
- Protecting women from being dropped from coverage when they become pregnant or sick and allowing them to seek basic OB/GYN care without a referral.
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