Last week at this time my wife and I were in the cool pines of Ruidoso, NM enjoying a few days of vacation. It was very nice — hope you are able to work in a vacation this summer if you have not already.

I try to take a real vacation and not work while I’m away from the office, but I do watch the news to try to stay up on what is going on in the world. So, I was a bit intrigued when the President Obama announced on Tuesday a delay of the provision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that requires  all but the smallest employers offer medical coverage or pay a fine.

What this amounts to is companies with at least 50 workers now have until 2015 to provide coverage (if they don’t offer it already.) So basically, these employers get an extra year. I guess any delay in the ACA is notable, but, most companies — 98 percent of large firms (200 or more workers) and 61 percent of small firms (three to 199 workers) — already offer health benefits. So, this delay will not affect huge numbers of people or companies. But, to those people who have to wait for coverage, it will, no doubt, be significant.

I think this delay underscores (not so much that we have to be reminded), that health care and its financing is complicated and writing a watershed law and implementing it are two entirely different things.

By the way, elsewhere in this edition is a nice article by Matt Driskill that I encourage you to read. Thanks to the Business Development COPIC, we now have a great tool to monitor internal referrals. To cut through the fancy language and lay it on the line — we want to see Texas Tech physicians refer to Texas Tech physicians. Hope you have a great week!