l****z 发帖数: 29846 | 1 By Gillian Roberts
July 3, 2013
Brokers who have scrambled for the past year to ensure their employer
clients are compliant with the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate, also
known in the industry as the “pay or play” mandate, are scrambling once
again, to take a deep breath.
For Mark Gaunya, principal at Borislow Insurance and EBA advisory board
member, some of his new business clients were behind in preparations. “We
have quite a few prospects that need our assistance and time was running
short to help all of them,” Gaunya says. “Perhaps now with the delay, we
will be able to help more of them and maybe, just maybe, make some tweaks to
the law to make it less painful and irrationally tilted toward government
over reach.”
Business groups are also feeling relief today after the White House on
Tuesday, in a blog posting from Valerie Jarrett, senior advisor to the
president, announced it will suspend for one year reporting requirements in
2014 for larger employers to demonstrate compliance with a mandate to offer
employees health insurance coverage. Financial penalties for larger
employers that fail to comply are part of this delay, one year later than
authorized in the ACA.
"We applaud the Obama Administration's decision … This provides vital
breathing room to implement the law in a more thoughtful and administrable
way," James A. Klein, president of the American Benefits Council, said in a
statement regarding the U.S. Treasury Department’s confirmation of the news
Tuesday evening.
Jarrett’s post continued with a nod to the White House’s communication
with such business groups. “As we implement this law, we have and will
continue to make changes as needed,” Jarrett said. “In our ongoing
discussions with businesses we have heard that you need the time to get this
right. We are listening. So in response to your concerns, we are making two
changes.
Most large employers are already offering health coverage, says John Garven,
president of Benico Limited, a benefit adviser in the Chicago area. He adds
that they planned to continue before the delay, and will after and that
this delay will mostly help smaller business owners or those employers in
high turnover, low-wage industries that weren’t offering coverage already.
“A lot of our clients are in the hospitality industry and don’t offer
coverage and they were preparing to do something and now there’s one year
relief … my sense is that they’ll divert a year,” Garven says. “I
imagine there will be additional guidance on this and I think this next time
around these clients will be even more prepared and hopefully less confused
.”
Joseph Goedert, reporter with Health Data Management, a SourceMedia
publication, contributed to this report. |
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