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Employers examine options among ACA provisions
Critics caution that the employer mandate will drive firms to cut hours and cut positions to avoid the responsibility.
Employers are examining their options among the Affordable Care Act provisions in 2014, says Tami Simon, managing directory of Buck Consultants, a global HR benefits consulting services firm.
“To the extent that they’re given an opportunity to try to implement and work with the regulators to get input, that’s probably the best-case scenario,” Simon says. “They’re worried and are trying to do the right thing.”
On Monday, the Obama administration announced businesses employing 50 to 99 full-time employees have until 2016 to provide healthcare to employees before facing a penalty.
Critics caution that the employer mandate will drive firms to cut hours and cut positions to avoid the responsibility.
"Clearly most employers that are going to continue their health insurance benefits aren’t necessarily thinking about dumping their employee benefits and going to the public exchanges," Simon says. That’s true of larger employers-more than 90% of which offered health insurance prior to ACA.
Opponents to ACA have called for a revision to the individual mandate, too, asking that the $95 penalty be nixed at the end of 2014 for those who don’t have coverage.
“The current political environment is so unpredictable right now that I don’t think anybody can really tell what’s going to happen,” Simon says. “My suspicion is that full repeal will be very hard, but perhaps there will be some nips and tucks and tweaks to the law, as most laws are nipped and tucked after passage. No law that’s ever passed is ever perfect, and you always have to make some changes or corrections. It evolves over time. That’s why we have the regulatory process that’s why we have technical corrections in the entire legislative process.”
She says the industry will just have to hold its breath and wait for the mid-term elections.
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In this episode of the "Meet the Board" podcast series, Briana Contreras, Managed Healthcare Executive editor, speaks with Ateev Mehrotra, a member of the MHE editorial advisory board and a professor of healthcare policy and medicine at Harvard Medical School. Mehtrotra is also a hospitalist at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston. In the discussion, Contreras gets to know Mehrotra more on a personal level and picks his brain on some of his research interests including telehealth, alternative payment models and price transparency.
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Inflation Reduction Act: Reforms to Patient Cost-Sharing
September 18th 2023Lower out-of-pocket costs for patients might put upward pressure on drug prices, as manufacturers face less price sensitivity, note Matthew Majewski and Rhett Johnson of Charles River Associates. But they also note that upward pressure on price is likely to be limited to the inflation rate as any additional price increase would need to be paid back to CMS in the form of inflation rebates.
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Spending climbed by 2.7% in 2021. In 2020, it soared by 10.3%, fueled by federal government spending in response to the pandemic. The blizzard of calculations of 2021 healthcare spending by CMS’ actuaries also provides further evidence that utilization of healthcare services bounced back in 2021.
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