President Obama Wins, Seniors and Their Families Lose

The Supreme Court ruling today allowed President Obama and the Democrats to proceed with taking over the national healthcare system.  One aspect of the national healthcare takeover act has not received very much attention until now, but it will be painfully apparent in 2014 (if not before) when the “employer mandate” takes effect.  That mandate will create inflationary pressure on prices of all U.S. goods and services, especially Senior Care services.

Employer Mandate Increases Business Expenses, Drives Up Consumer Prices

The employer mandate in the takeover act requires all private (non-government) employers to begin to pay for their employees’ healthcare insurance, beginning January 1, 2014.  Employers who fail to pay for their employees’ healthcare will required to pay a “fine”, which is really a new employer healthcare tax, instead.

The new employer healthcare tax is actually less on a per-employee than the per-employee cost of paying for healthcare insurance for employees, so many, if not most, employers will choose to do that.  Either way, though, the employers’ costs of doing business will increase on 1/1/2014 because they must begin paying this new tax.

Senior Care Businesses Will See Significantly Cost Increases

The cost of doing business for service businesses that are labor-intensive, such as Senior Care, will be particularly hard hit.  Remember, this is a pure increase in tax cost with no new improvements in efficiency, training or quality of service.  The only beneficiary of this new tax is the government.

The Cost Of Senior Care Will Increase

What all this means for the average citizen is higher prices, a big inflationary price increase.  Many U.S. businesses, especially small busineses, will have much higher costs and will have to begin charging much higher prices for their goods and services.  This will be especially true for labor-intensive businesses like Senior Care.

We expect prices for employer-model, full-service in-home caregiving services to increase at least $1 to $2 per hour due to the healthcare takeover act, for all Senior Care companies, beginning on January 1, 2014.  In addition to that, the prices of many other goods and services that they purchase will also increase.

Many families will have to make difficult decisions about the care of the older loved ones.  They face tough choices such as whether to continue with more costly care, find alternatives such as care from registries or other forms of non-employer-model care companies, or just cut back on care because they can no longer afford it.

What Do You Think?

We predict that the quality of life for many older adults will decline as a result of the healthcare takeover act.  You can thank President Obama and the Democrats for this.  That’s our take on the situation.

How do you feel about it?