"Steve Hooper, of the Health Economics Group, a company
that manages corporate benefit plans, says most of his employees have incomes
low enough to receive federal subsidies," says Stacy Cowley in Dropping
Health Plans, to Pick Better Coverage. Employers are not offering health
insurance anymore, after they are realizing that their employees would be
better off that way. "Mr. [Keith] Perkins, who is 54, did the math and
calculated that most of his employees, who are spread across Maryland, West
Virginia and Pennsylvania, would come out ahead if he dropped his group policy
and let them buy insurance individually through the new federal and state
exchanges," says Stacy Cowley. Mr. Perkins "was tired of trying to
choose one plan every year to cover all of their diverse needs." He found
a way for the employees to make their own choices. "When I did the subsidy
calculator, I realized many of them would actually be better off if we didn't
offer coverage. We took the amount of money we were paying for health insurance
and dumped it into their paychecks instead. And this way, they get to make the
choice, not me," says Mr. Perkins. This way, the employer doesn’t have to
worry about fitting the needs of the employee when it comes to health
insurance. “Employers are seriously considering walking away from their plans,”
says Thomas Harte, an insurance broker with Landmark Benefits in Hampstead,
N.H.
I think it is a good thing that Keith Perkins put the money
he was paying for health insurance into his employee’s paychecks. It gives them
the opportunity to choose how they deal with their health insurance on their
own, and it means that the employer does not have to include the health
insurance in his plan. To me, it seems like this is better for both sides. “The
decline in the number of small businesses offering health insurance began long
before the new law… It is too early to say how the Affordable Care Act will
affect that trend, but health insurance has long been a headache for small
businesses. Their policies are typically more expensive than comparable plans
available to larger employers, and because the risk pool of participants is
tiny, one sick employee can increase a group’s premiums sharply,” says Stacy
Cowley. Small businesses’ policies are probably more expensive so that people
will want to be employed there. They probably have to offer more so a person
would choose them over a bigger business.
Source: "Dropping Health Plans, to Pick Better Coverage " by Stacy Cowley, from http://www.nytimes.com, published December 11, 2013
