Feb 12 2014
News outlets take a closer look at the impact of Monday's Obama administration decision to postpone enforcement of the employer mandate for some businesses.
The Wall Street Journal: Some Small Firms See Little Relief In Latest Health-Law Delay
Small and midsize businesses stand to benefit the most from the latest delay in the health law's employer insurance requirement. But farm co-owner Laura Pedersen doesn't plan to take advantage of it. The Seneca Castle, N.Y., proprietor of a produce and grain farm last year rearranged her employees' schedules and workloads to keep the farm's full-time staff below 50 workers. Her goal was to avoid having to start providing insurance or pay a penalty in 2015 under the Affordable Care Act (Needleman and Colvin, 2/11).
The Associated Press: Health Care Tweak: Big Companies Get Wiggle Room
Big retail stores, hotels, restaurants and other companies with lots of low-wage and part-time workers are among the main beneficiaries of the Obama administration's latest tweak to health care rules. Companies with 100 or more workers will be able to avoid the biggest of two potential employer penalties in the Affordable Care Act by offering coverage to 70 percent of their full-timers (Alonso-Zaldivar, 2/12).
CQ HealthBeat: Postponement Unlikely To Change Business Strategies, Analysts Say
Most employers won't upend their health insurance strategies based on the Obama administration's delays in the employer mandate, according to policy analysts on Tuesday who were evaluating the impacts. The number of people whose coverage changes because of the delays may be in the range of hundreds of thousands, rather than millions, although it is hard to get a firm estimate (Adams, 2/11).
Kaiser Health News: Questions And Answers On The Latest ACA Delay
On Monday the Obama administration announced another delay in rolling out the Affordable Care Act, weakening the requirement to offer coverage next year for large employers and postponing it for smaller ones. Here's what it means (Hancock, Appleby and Carey, 2/11).
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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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