New Tools from Word & Brown Help Small Businesses Comply with ACA Mandates

ORANGE, Calif. -- (BUSINESS WIRE) -- Word & Brown General Agency recently announced the availability of four custom-built “calculators” to help brokers determine if their clients are subject to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) mandate. The calculators are the latest addition to Word & Brown’s Health Reform Resource Center, which helps brokers, consumers and small business owners understand and comply with the new requirements contained in the ACA.

“These new calculators make it easy for brokers to help their clients determine if their business is subject to the ACA coverage mandate and what the appropriate next steps for them might be,” said Jessica Word, executive vice president of Word & Brown General Agency. “We offer our calculators to our brokers based on how their clients pay their employees and by having separate calculators rather than one generic version, we provide options and minimize confusion.”

The new simple-to-use calculators offered through Word & Brown include:

• Group-Size Calculator: Identifies whether or not groups have 50 or more full-time equivalent (FTE) employees and are subject to the “shared-responsibility” provision of the ACA.
• Seasonal Calculator: Determines the seasonal employee’s impact on group size.
• Permanent Part-Time Calculator: Determines part-time employee’s impact on group size when they are hourly without a fixed number of hours per week.

If any of the calculators determines that a company has 50 or more full-time employees, brokers can then access the Affordability Calculator to determine if coverage is “affordable” for employees as defined by the ACA. If not, the broker can work with the business owner on a 2014 action plan to correct this in order to prevent a penalty payment.

The calculators are part of the Word & Brown online Health Reform Resource Center. Launched in January, the center provides brokers and their customers the information and guidance they need to make informed decisions regarding their new ACA requirements. The center also provides information on health insurance exchanges including the California Health Benefit Exchange’s Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP), which will offer health insurance to groups with 50 or fewer employees.

Word & Brown General Agency is part of The Word & Brown Companies, which provides insurance services through more than 55,000 brokers to hundreds of thousands of individuals and almost 60,000 employers with nearly 6.5 million eligible employees. The organization also offers broker-assisted and direct-to-consumer online sales of individual and family health and Medicare plans and accident, dental, vision and life insurance coverage. Included in The Word & Brown Companies are: CHOICE Administrators^®, the nation’s leader in developing and administrating employee-choice health benefit programs; CONEXIS, providing benefits solutions to clients nationwide, with expertise in COBRA and HIPAA administrative services, direct bill services, and flexible benefits administration, including flexible spending accounts and Section 132 commuter benefits; Quotit^® Corporation, the leading Internet application service provider for the health insurance/employee benefits industry; and HealthCompare, which works with brokers and carriers to help individuals and families easily research, compare, buy and enroll in the right health insurance plan at the right price. For more information, visit www.wordandbrowncompanies.com.