Nancy L. Bolton

Nancy Bolton maintains employers need to plan and implement health care reform provisions no matter who wins the presidential election

After the Supreme Court upheld the so-called individual mandate and substantially all of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act following a legal challenge led by my home state of Florida, President Obama hadn't finished his victory lap before the political line was drawn in the sand. The battle is over, but war wages on until the American people take to the voting booth in November. I have a feeling this election year will be an interesting one, and with a front row seat in Florida, I'm going to be tuned in and transfixed.

Recently, I had an opportunity to attend a luncheon where Florida Governor Rick Scott gave the keynote address. He was surprisingly bright and certainly on top of things here in our sunny state, which has suffered a few economic kicks in the head over the past few years. He spoke on myriad issues and provided a number of positive statistics that indicated his short time in office has been a success. Unemployment is going down, while tourism is going up. Each topic was one of importance, but I was particularly interested in hearing what this first-time politician had to say about Florida's current position on health care reform.

Living in Florida means not worrying about getting a good parking place when I'm shopping. In fact, the weather is so beautiful in Florida this time of year that I purposefully park far away. It allows the ol' pedometer a chance to click a few extra times as I work off the eggnog consumed over the holidays and also allows me to enjoy a little sun on my face and the sight of palm trees swaying in the breeze. But we all know the weather in Florida isn't always so pleasant. Hurricanes agree with all those Disney tourists that Florida is a favorite place to visit. The most recent one in our area, Wilma, came from the southwest with a vengeance. It slammed us - uprooting trees, knocking down power lines, sending roof tiles as projectile missiles through the air. Then it cleared. And the weather was sunny and calm. And for a short amount of time, all was well. But it was only the eye of the storm - with even more damaging hurricane winds churning behind it.

A little over a year ago, I wrote a column about my plans to jump on the dependent eligibility verification audit bandwagon, along with thousands of other employers eager to remove ineligible dependents from their health insurance plans to hedge against ever-rising health care costs.

Bolton questions 'us vs. them' mentality brewing in America over defined benefit pension plans. Comparing public DB plans to private retirement plans is unfair, she says.

Lately, it seems as though a week doesn't go by without a survey inquiry from a neighboring city or county about how Palm Beach County is encouraging or mandating employees to quit smoking.

The ink is barely dry on our 2011 calendars, and here in Palm Beach County we're already finding ourselves in the thick of a request for proposal for our self-insured health plan for 2012.

As many employers navigate their first months of compliance with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, it could be assumed that employees are enjoying the quiet before the storm.

Without a doubt, many of us working deep in the weeds of our organization's health plans are wary of the ever-mounting regulations surrounding health care reform. Recently, I attended a presentation that included a flowchart of implementation dates that looked sort of like a MapQuest depiction of lower Manhattan.