For employers and employees alike, health insurance problem… | www.myajc.com

Lisa Ehlers had landed her dream job.

After 19 years teaching elementary school in Cherokee County, the Woodstock resident used her new master’s degree in social work to secure a job at a for-profit agency that provides outpatient mental health services to children and adolescents.

“I just loved it,” Ehlers said of her time at Focus Counseling and Training. “I loved (owner Beth Brock) and the other employees. But I couldn’t stay.”

Ehlers, 44 and a single mom after her husband died in 2005 from cystic fibrosis, needed health insurance for her two boys, especially her 13 year old who suffers from bipolar disorder and requires costly medications and therapy. Brock could not afford to offer it, so Ehlers took a job at the larger Ridgeview Institute in Smyrna, which did.

Ehlers’ story offers one small example of how the availability of health insurance can affect employers and employees in the most personal and even painful ways: Focus lost a dedicated worker it did not want to lose. The story can also serve as a microcosm of America’s larger health care crisis — the lack of affordable coverage for all — and how the grand effort to solve the problem, the Affordable Care Act, is forcing some companies and employees to make tough business decisions.

Employers far and wide have criticized the ACA. They say health coverage shouldn’t be government-mandated and add that the requirement that businesses offer it will have unintended negative consequences.

For Brock, the ACA will limit her hiring and cause her to put off the big plans she had to open a second office in Savannah, her hometown, she said.

It will, she said, “stop us from growing.”

via For employers and employees alike, health insurance problem… | www.myajc.com.