Panel: ACA heightens health care needs

By Marija B. Vader

Also known as Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act will not go away.

So business owners should learn about the law, accept it and work with it or work outside traditional insurance, said three Colorado Springs professionals acutely in tune with the national health care law now in effect.

Dr. Mark Tomasulo, a primary care physician who launched PeakMed Primary Care last year, along with Southern Colorado Economic Forum Director Tatiana Bailey, who has a Ph.D. in public health, and Heidi Cottle, president of Benefit Services Group, owned by National Financial Services, spoke to the local Middle Market Entrepreneurs last week about the controversial law and the convoluted health care system in the U.S.

Tomasulo launched a practice that is more of a direct-pay service with a high-deductible, a monthly service fee, no co-pay and 24-hour access to a physician. He doesnt accept insurance and doesnt mark up the cost of medicine. He left traditional practice because were becoming factory workers, seeing dozens of patients daily without the ability to spend quality time with them, he said.

To have a relationship with our patients we really need to get back to that, Tomasulo said.

Theres a lot of reasons health care is in trouble, said Bailey. One factor is an aging population, she said.

Most 85 percent of the money spent on health care is spent toward the end of life, Bailey said. Health care is not a normal good [like a TV or a phone] from an economic perspective, but we keep treating it that way.

Also, 20 percent of the $3 trillion Americans spend on health care is the administrative cost associated with transmitting payment through insurance companies, Bailey said. The 50 million uninsured people in this country receive health care paid for by people who have insurance.

For their 2015 taxes, some business owners will be required to prove to the Internal Revenue Service that they provide health insurance to their employees, and those employees will have to prove coverage themselves, said Cottle.

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Panel: ACA heightens health care needs

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