Here are the latest items that we’ve come across that we believe will be of value to you.
Paycheck Protection Program (PPP):
We have spoken with many businesses who are looking to leverage the PPP that was part of the CARES Act, and as a reminder this is targeted towards employers with less than 500 employees. Purely as an example of the scale of this program and the need Huntington Bank, who is the largest SBA lender in the country, stated that they expect to process 100,000 applications for the PPP. This is compared to 40,000 which is the most they have ever processed in one year before.
Miller Johnson had a webinar today focused specifically on the PPP which was well done.
There is a lot of good information on the SBA website related to the PPP and other programs available to employers to deal with the fallout from this crisis.
The Senate has also published a Small Business Owners Guide to the CARES Act.
Tax Provisions of the CARES Act:
In the event you haven’t had a chance to digest all of the tax provisions included in the CARES Act, here is the Miller Johnson session from this morning.
Impact of coronavirus on health insurance costs:
As the reality of the coronavirus settles in, there is a lot of activity around crystal balls trying to determine what this crisis will mean for the future of health insurance costs. Like most topics related to the coronavirus, the projections are all over the board so please don’t panic as you hear some of these numbers.
A projection by Covered California, the health insurance exchange in that state, projects costs related to COVID-19 could be $34 Billion to $251 Billion, and the impact on insurance prices could be 4% to 40%. While I’m not completely sure about this, I believe there is high likelihood this study was completed by a meteorologist. The New York Times also cited this study and we think it is quite pessimistic.
Willis Towers Watson has a more conservative analysis projecting an impact as high as a 7% increase on top of the 5% trend increase already expected for 2021. This study also has a lot of wide ranging assumptions that should be noted as well.
To wrap things up for today we know that you have a lot of pressing items on your plate at the moment, but when things slow down a bit for you we encourage you to start thinking about what a 7% or 40% increase might mean for you in 2021. Jim Eickhoff, the CEO of Creative Dining, credits the work we did for them in 2019 setting up a fully custom self-funded plan as a key factor in being able to continue health insurance coverage for their employees during this extended leave of absence. The Creative Dining story was recently featured in Chief Executive magazine, and we are here to help you however we can.
