Feb 11 2014
The Washington Post: White House Delays Health Insurance Mandate For Medium-Sized Employers Until 2016
The Obama administration announced Monday it would give medium-sized employers an extra year, until 2016, before they must offer health insurance to their full-time workers. Firms with at least 100 employees will have to start offering this coverage in 2015. By offering an unexpected grace period to businesses with between 50 and 99 employees, administration officials are hoping to defuse another potential controversy involving the 2010 health-care law, which has become central to Republicans' campaign to make political gains in this year's midterm election (Eilperin and Goldstein, 2/10).
Politico: Obama Administration Delays Part Of Employer Mandate Again
Small businesses with fewer than 50 workers have always been exempt from the new coverage requirements but the law originally required all other businesses to start covering their workers for face penalties beginning Jan. 1, 2014. The White House last July pushed that start date to 2015, in response to concerted pressure from the business community. The new policy Treasury announced gives the mid-size businesses - those with 50 to 99 workers - another year to adapt to the changing health care marketplace (Norman, 2/10).
The Hill: ObamaCare's Employer Mandate Pushed Back For The Second Time
The Obama administration on Monday announced it is delaying the employer mandate in ObamaCare until 2016 for some businesses. This delay in the mandate - the second so far - would only apply to businesses with between 50 and 99 employees, who would have until January 2016 to decide whether to offer insurance to their employees or pay a penalty. Businesses would also be barred from cutting their workers in order to fall under the threshold (Goad, 2/10).
CNBC: Delayed: Obamacare's Employer Mandate For Small Businesses
Officials Monday said that the delay in the Obamacare mandate will affect 50 percent of the businesses that were supposed to be complying by 2015. Those officials could not answer how many workers would be affected by the delay. However, those officials also took pains to note that the so-called employer mandate to offer affordable health insurance to workers does not affect 96 percent of the employers in the U.S., because they have fewer than 50 full-time employees (2/10).
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 This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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