If you’d like to discuss employment or health care law, contact David Weissman, head of the Rose Law Group Employment Law and Managed Health Care Law Practice, dweissman@roselawgroup.com
A number of business owners across the U.S. are threatening to lay off workers, slash employee hours or add surcharges to their services, citing higher costs of doing business once all the provisions of “Obamacare” kick in in 2014.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 requires companies with more than 50 workers to provide health insurance to employees who work at least 30 hours a week, starting in January 2014. If they don’t, they must pay the government $2,000 a year for each full-time employee minus the first 30 workers.
Although some say slashing hours will hurt productivity, the opposite might occur if companies decide to avoid penalties by keeping their hours intact and providing coverage, David Weissman, head of the Employment Law and Managed Health Care Law Practice at Rose Law Group in Scottsdale, Ariz. told Christian Science Monitor.
“If coverage is extended to those employees who did not previously have health insurance, the company may have healthier, happier employees who are more likely to stay with the company,” Weissman said. “This may lead to greater productivity by those employees, which could then result in increased profits for the company as a whole.”
The reform law puts companies with already-slim profit margins in a bind, especially if they pay minimum wage, says Adam Powell, president of Payer+Provider Syndicate, a health services consulting firm in Boston.
Revenues from companies that elect to pay the $2,000-per-worker penalty are to be used to offset government costs of operating state-based “exchanges” where uninsured workers can shop for affordable health insurance. As of Friday, 22 states plus the District of Columbia have agreed to operate the exchanges, while 14 have refused, deferring to the federal government. Fourteen, including Arizona, have not decided.
