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Employers Eye Bare-Bones Health Plans (a way around Obamacare)
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 (a way around Obamacare) (Original Post)
antigop
May 2013
OP
RC
(25,592 posts)1. Where is the welfare of people anymore?
Everything revolves around money now and how to get more of it from other people, regardless of the cost to those others.
antigop
(12,778 posts)2. this is what happens when corporations are involved in providing health care to employees
Providing health care is an expense to a corporation and corporations want as much profit as possible to satisfy Wall Street.
DCKit
(18,541 posts)3. Who could have seen THAT coming?
Two years of this drastic BS, and everyone is going to be demanding universal healthcare.... but don't say a word. Shhhhhhhh.