Looking For Resources to Help Understand ACA Changes?

It should come as no surprise that the upcoming open enrollment period for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will be a large source of stress for organizations that provide health care benefits along with individual musicians and arts managers responsible for purchasing their own insurance. Unfortunately, there isn’t much to recommend along the lines of resources to help alleviate that anxiety.

Manufactured instability in the healthcare marketplace along with drastic cuts to education and support resources are going to make the already truncated enrollment period even more frustrating.

Adaptistration People 134I’ve spent the last week researching online resources nonprofit organizations and individuals can use to help shed some light on all this uncertainty and unfortunately, the well is nearly dry.

Missionbox.com has a very basic overview that was last updated September 2017 but it doesn’t have any specific information about what sorts of updates were made nor does it clarify what to anticipate for 2018.

Nonprofitquarterly.com has a good opinion post on how repeal and replace could impact the nonprofit sector as a whole but nothing substantive on considerations for navigating the impending uncertainties. Service organizations are dry as well.

The best resource available right now is for those purchasing individual and/or family insurance directly. Those individuals can visit healthcare.gov/see-plans to preview plans and costs but consider it window shopping since the final figures won’t be available until open enrollment begins and you submit a completed application on Wednesday, November 1, 2017.

If you’ve come across anything useful, take a moment to share a link to the resource in the comments.

About Drew McManus

"I hear that every time you show up to work with an orchestra, people get fired." Those were the first words out of an executive's mouth after her board chair introduced us. That executive is now a dear colleague and friend but the day that consulting contract began with her orchestra, she was convinced I was a hatchet-man brought in by the board to clean house.

I understand where the trepidation comes from as a great deal of my consulting and technology provider work for arts organizations involves due diligence, separating fact from fiction, interpreting spin, as well as performance review and oversight. So yes, sometimes that work results in one or two individuals "aggressively embracing career change" but far more often than not, it reinforces and clarifies exactly what works and why.

In short, it doesn't matter if you know where all the bodies are buried if you can't keep your own clients out of the ground, and I'm fortunate enough to say that for more than 15 years, I've done exactly that for groups of all budget size from Qatar to Kathmandu.

For fun, I write a daily blog about the orchestra business, provide a platform for arts insiders to speak their mind, keep track of what people in this business get paid, help write a satirical cartoon about orchestra life, hack the arts, and love a good coffee drink.

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