It is no secret that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) requires many employers to provide health insurance coverage to full-time employees, or pay a tax penalty. Employers subject to “Play or Pay” let out a collective sigh of relief when the final regulations, issued in February 2014, provided some additional transition relief in […]
Many news outlets are reporting on the break the administration plans to give to insurers. (See the Kaiser report here.) The break is expected to come in the form of an adjustment to the MLR calculations. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires insurance carriers to maintain a certain medical loss ratio (MLR). The MLR requires carriers […]
On March 5, 2014, after several days of speculation, the Obama Administration announced a two year extension of a policy designed to allow individuals and small employers to extend plans slated to be canceled due to noncompliance with certain Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) requirements. A one year reprieve for canceled plans was […]
Did you miss the live webinar we held on the delay of the Employer Mandate? Listen in on this recorded presentation where we talk about the new Final Regulations given on February 10, 2014. Here we discuss the new Transition Relief for employers of certain sizes and those with non calendar year plans, show the special […]
Last week, the IRS and Treasury published the final regulations on the employer shared responsibility provision, also known as the employer mandate or Play or Pay, of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). Since publication, Katharine Marshall and I have spent a significant amount of time combing through the regulations to understand what has […]
After more than a year of anticipation, on Monday, February 10, 2014, the US Treasury Department issued final regulations and announced yet another delay of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s Employer Shared Responsibility provision, which requires employers with more than 50 employees to offer health insurance coverage to full-time workers or pay a […]
The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has very quietly published a Notice of Coverage Options with an updated expiration date on its website. The new copy of the notice contains an expiration date of January 31, 2017, but it does not appear that the DOL has changed the substance of the notice. All employers subject to […]
The IRS and Treasury have published a new Notice of Proposed Rulemaking and Notice of Hearing providing additional clarifications on the Individual Mandate and Minimum Essential Coverage requirements under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). This NPRM provides a number of clarifications and limited exemptions from the individual mandate in 2014 for individuals enrolled […]
Although the employer mandate penalties of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) have been delayed until 2015, many other pieces of the ACA take effect this year, in 2014. For example, the prohibition on pre-existing condition exclusions, the out-of-pocket limits, and the prohibition on annual or lifetime limits for essential health benefits are all effective for […]
With all that is going on with the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and whether and to what extent employers have to offer insurance to their employees, many employers may not be paying much attention to how their Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) fit within the ACA. Ignorance is bliss, for now. However, employers should begin to […]
