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Employers Eye Bare-Bones Health Plans Under New Law
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/employers-eye-bare-bones-health-030600026.htmlEmployers are increasingly recognizing they may be able to avoid certain penalties under the federal health law by offering very limited plans that can lack key benefits such as hospital coverage.
Benefits advisers and insurance brokersbucking a commonly held expectation that the law would broadly enrich benefitsare pitching these low-benefit plans around the country. They cover minimal requirements such as preventive services, but often little more. Some of the plans wouldn't cover surgery, X-rays or prenatal care at all. Others will be paired with limited packages to cover additional services, for instance, $100 a day for a hospital visit.
Federal officials say this type of plan, in concept, would appear to qualify as acceptable minimum coverage under the law, and let most employers avoid an across-the-workforce $2,000-per-worker penalty for firms that offer nothing. Employers could still face other penalties they anticipate would be far less costly.
It is unclear how many employers will adopt the strategy, but a handful of companies have signed on and an industry is sprouting around the tactic. More than a dozen brokers and benefit-administrators in 10 states said they were discussing the strategy with their clients.
"There had to be a way out" of the penalty for employers with low-wage workers, said Todd Dorton, a consultant and broker for Gallagher Benefit Services Inc., a unit of Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., who has enrolled several employers in the limited plans.
Benefits advisers and insurance brokersbucking a commonly held expectation that the law would broadly enrich benefitsare pitching these low-benefit plans around the country. They cover minimal requirements such as preventive services, but often little more. Some of the plans wouldn't cover surgery, X-rays or prenatal care at all. Others will be paired with limited packages to cover additional services, for instance, $100 a day for a hospital visit.
Federal officials say this type of plan, in concept, would appear to qualify as acceptable minimum coverage under the law, and let most employers avoid an across-the-workforce $2,000-per-worker penalty for firms that offer nothing. Employers could still face other penalties they anticipate would be far less costly.
It is unclear how many employers will adopt the strategy, but a handful of companies have signed on and an industry is sprouting around the tactic. More than a dozen brokers and benefit-administrators in 10 states said they were discussing the strategy with their clients.
"There had to be a way out" of the penalty for employers with low-wage workers, said Todd Dorton, a consultant and broker for Gallagher Benefit Services Inc., a unit of Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., who has enrolled several employers in the limited plans.
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Employers Eye Bare-Bones Health Plans Under New Law (Original Post)
antigop
May 2013
OP
drm604
(16,230 posts)1. There are always people who will look for loopholes, regardless of who they hurt.
Why didn't the bill anticipate this?
I suspect that it did and that those who try to cheap out will discover that they can't. I hope I'm not mistaken about that.
awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)2. Because the bill, for the most part...
was written by the insurance industry. The only thing they didn't get was the ability to not cover pre-existing conditions. It is a pig that has on more make up than a call girl.
blkmusclmachine
(16,149 posts)3. +1
ObamaCare is a big, wet kiss to the Insurance Industry.