Do you feel confident that your employer will still be offering health insurance coverage to you in the next three years? A new study by consulting group, Deloitte asked executives from 560 companies about their plans for extending health insurance to workers once the Affordable Care Act kicks in, and the results are definitely newsworthy.
Nearly one in ten of the U.S. executives surveyed intend to drop coverage within the next three years. Still, 81 percent of respondents plan on continuing to provide benefits, and 10 percent said that they are not quite sure what the future holds yet.
Smaller businesses were more likely to say that they plan on ending coverage. 13 percent of businesses with 50 to100 workers said they will put an end to offering coverage. This is compared to only 2 percent of companies with over 1,000 employees.
Many of the anonymous respondents said they will only drop coverage under certain circumstances. For example:
- 16 percent of employers will drop health insurance if a competitor does.
- One-third of respondents will drop health insurance if the health reform law requires them to provide more extensive benefits than they currently offer.
- One-third also claim that they will drop coverage if the cost of penalties for not providing benefits is less costly than actually providing the benefits.
75 percent of the companies surveyed have already begun, or plan to make changes to the types of coverage they extend. This can take the form of offering much less coverage than before, requiring a larger contribution from their employees, and offering incentives to employees with healthier lifestyles.
