“Many executives have long enjoyed perks like free health care and better health benefits for themselves and their families. But under a little noticed anti-discrimination provision in the federal health law, such advantages could soon trigger fines of up to $500,000. Employers ‘should be more concerned about this than anything else’ in the law, because many are in violation and the penalties can be stiff, says Jay Starkman, chief executive of Engage PEO in St. Petersburg, Fla., which offers human resources services and advises clients on the health law.”
“The health care law is ‘the most disruptive instrument to the American workplace in my lifetime.’ That’s the perspective of Richmond businessman William J. Goldin, Jr., president of family-owned Strange’s Florists, Greenhouses and Garden Centers since 1978, who testified before the Small Business Committee last week. Even proponents of the controversial health care law are now worried, as the predictable problems become a reality.”
“The nation’s largest movie theater chain has cut the hours of thousands of employees, saying in a company memo that ObamaCare requirements are to blame. Regal Entertainment Group, which operates more than 500 theaters in 38 states, last month rolled back shifts for non-salaried workers to 30 hours per week, putting them under the threshold at which employers are required to provide health insurance.”
“In a 2010 paper I authored for the Heritage Foundation, I documented the delayed and failed effort by the Massachusetts public exchange (Connector) to offer real choice and savings to small businesses. My report suggested the experience served as a warning to other states. I suppose I should have targeted it toward the federal government instead.”
“What if there were a way for even small employers to escape some Affordable Care Act rules blamed for driving up costs? Some see self-insurance for medical care, which is exempt from the law’s taxes, benefit rules and price restrictions taking effect next year, as just such an opportunity… In some circumstances, self-insurance by small businesses with younger employees could cause premiums in the small-group insurance market to rise by 25 percent, according to previous research from the Commonwealth Fund and the Urban Institute.”
“I don’t get the sense that at the time of passage, people had spent a lot of time thinking about the sheer mechanics of how this would all work: how the IT would be built, the rules written, the necessary information assembled. They spent a lot of time staring at the blueprints, not so much thinking about the building materials and the labor.”
“Unable to meet tight deadlines in the new health care law, the Obama administration is delaying parts of a program intended to provide affordable health insurance to small businesses and their employees — a major selling point for the health care legislation.”
“They say many employees will decline company-offered insurance, either because they can get insurance through Medicaid or a family member, or because they prefer to pay the penalty for not having health insurance. The penalty next year will be as low as $95 next year, much less than most employees will be asked to pay through company-sponsored insurance plans. The comments suggest that some people may fall through the cracks in the law and remain uninsured, at least for a time.”
“Starting in January, employers with at least 50 workers must offer affordable coverage or pay a penalty. To stay under this limit, some are considering outsourcing jobs to specialists such as Kelly Services, Manpower, Robert Half and Randstad, whose stock prices have soared.”
“Report after report has established that the only changes that have materialized under the ACA are, in fact, the opposite of what small-business owners have been demanding for decades. The law has increased costs and added profound complexity to an already confusing system; higher taxes and thousands of pages of new regulations are having a tremendous impact on the small-business community and have contributed to the slow recovery of Main Street.”