Editors' Notebook

Health care. Wherever you fall on the philosophical spectrum about the Affordable Care Act, known in some circles as "Obamacare," the subject bears -- might I be bold and say "demands" -- thoughtful consideration and discussion around your dinner table or farm office desk.

Before you have those conversations, I suggest you read, at least once, the series our DTN Executive Editor Marcia Zarley Taylor and DTN Special Correspondent Elizabeth Williams are pulling together on the subject. The first of those stories in the "Health Care Countdown" series is posted in our Top Stories section and elsewhere on both our subscription satellite and online products and on our free DTN/TheProgressiveFarmer.com site.

I say read the pieces at least once because the ACA is an incredibly complicated subject. If you're sure ACA doesn't apply to you or your farm, that's probably a sign you'd better give the stories another read. Few farmers will not be affected in some way by the new health care mandates, and those that slip underneath the bar won't likely know that for sure until they get deep into the rules and regulations with a worthy adviser.

One of the surprises I picked up on as we edited the series is just how rare such a worthy adviser may be. This is not something you can hand off to your tax adviser or accountant like a pile full of business records and have them take care of it for you. Taylor stresses that it's critical you find qualified legal and tax advice around the ACA issues. Press your advisers for details, and if you hear, "well, I think that means" then suggest they help you seek out more knowledgeable expertise.

As Taylor notes in the initial piece of the series, while all the buzz around ACA has been on businesses with 50 full-time equivalent workers or more, "employers of all sizes will play a critical role in the entire process."

Even if you fall under that "large business" bar, you will need to have done the work to prove your innocence any time an uninsured employee goes to purchase insurance through one of the many state-created marketplaces.

For those at or above the bar, what makes up 50 full-time equivalent workers also needs special note. Many producers are surprised when the find out how close they may be to hitting the threshold, and a change or two in employee needs during an odd year could easily put someone in the "must comply" zone.

This is not an area, Taylor and Williams point out, where you'll want to be surprised down the road. Tax implications are potentially large, and cost of insurance compliance could change your whole business. We've already heard from growers who have dug deep into the details and actually decided to end high-labor-need enterprises and move back to row crops to stay below the bar for providing coverage. Others see that as an opportunity to expand; they just need to make sure they're covering health care costs in their business plans.

The stories also are chock-full of links to other resources to help your advisers and you navigate the regulations. To give you continued access to that information, we'll be posting the series on our "DTN In-Depth website at http://www.dtn.com/….

So to sum up, if you're reading this sentence, read the series by Taylor and Williams. If the details make your head spin, don't just spew expletives about government red tape and jump to other web page or satellite sections. Have a cup of coffee or a glass of lemonade, and read the stories again. Have others in your farming operation and other farmers that you know and care about read them as well.

Hats off to Taylor and to Williams for taking the subject on and for cutting through to the key points farm business owners need to know. Also, a big thanks to the experts at CliftonLarsonAllen and to the Washington Farm Labor Association, who served as a key source in these stories. It's another example of the kind of detailed, business-critical information you'll only find on the pages of DTN.

Greg Horstmeier can be reached at greg.horstmeier@telventdtn.com

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