Businesses Not Really Affected by Obamacare

According to Obamacare, employees who work more than 30 hours a week are eligible for employer based health insurance, but only a few new employees actually enrolled in the company health insurance plans. A report by Mercer reveals that the number of full- and part-time employees who buy their health insurance through work increased 1.6% from 2014 to 2015, but the size of the workforce increased 2.2%.

“Employers that had to offer coverage to more employees were braced for a bump in enrollment this year, but they did not know how big it would be,” said Tracy Watts, a senior partner at Mercer. “While some did see increases, for the most part it seems the newly eligible either had coverage through a parent’s or spouse’s plan or through Medicaid — or are continuing to go bare.”

More than 80% of companies were already in compliance with the law before 2015.

When the Mercer report, Health Care Reform Five Years in surveyed 600 companies, it found that the average percentage of eligible employees increased from 87% to 88%, at the same time the percentage of enrolled employees fell from 84% to 83%.

In the food and lodging businesses — the average percentage of eligible employees grew from 57% to 60%. The report found that some employers held down enrollment growth, and decreased the working hours of employees to less than 30 hours a week. Only a few companies cut back staff to avoid covering more employees.

The change affected some employers more and one in ten companies found that their enrolled employees rose by 5%.

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Source: Beth Braverman

Source-Medindia