First few Article Sentences
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) is now law, and the regulations supporting this monumental piece of legislation have been pouring in ever since. Like many of you, I have been spending a great deal of time trying to determine what the compliance issues and practical applications of the PPACA will be for employers. My conclusions? First and foremost, health reform is a process and not an event. The outlook changes daily. Try looking at it this way: if the healthcare industry is 16% of our GDP in the United States, then the PPACA has effectively written new rules for a market economy larger than that of the United Kingdom, Brazil, Italy, Spain or Canada. Our healthcare industry alone is roughly equivalent in size to the total GDP of France. Like our national debt, the numbers are simply too large to easily understand and forecast with any accuracy. But amid the politics and the chaos of the PPACA lies a tremendous opportunity for human resource professionals to lead their organizations toward new and better strategic objectives.