The government is coming close to stopping employers from being able to offer substandard coverage.
Insurance plan consultants were recently surprised to discover that under the rules of the Affordable Care Act, employers are capable of offering policies to their employees for next year that do not include hospital benefits.
This has caused the administration to take action to correct an official calculator for approving of insurance policies.
Officials from the Treasury Department are now working on changing the path of an official calculator that gives approval to various types of health plan that do not include hospital coverage. This type of policy is not supposed to be able to pass the strict standard of the health care reform law for large employers. Lawyers in the insurance industry now believe that the calculator will be stopping that type of coverage before the close of this year.
This represents an important move in helping to overcome concerns voiced about the system for health plan offering.
This shift is considered by the lawyers to be a direct reflection of the rising concerns among senior officials with regards to health insurance that is being labeled as substandard by consumer advocates and that essentially stops workers from being able to take advantage of subsidies for buying improved coverage outside of that offered by their employers.
The calculator in question is a type of spreadsheet that is available online and that was created by the Department of Health and Human Services. Its successful implementation was among the main tools that are provided to allow large companies to make certain that the insurance policies that they offer their employees will comply with the “minimum-value” of benefits that are required by the health care reform.
Companies are required to offer this minimum value health insurance plan at an affordable price to their employees in order to allow themselves to avoid having to pay fines that are as high as $3,120, per worker, in 2015. It has been problematic that employers have had substandard policies approved by the calculator as employees who are offered approved plans through their workplaces – regardless of if they lack hospital benefits – are not permitted to use the insurance exchanges to purchase coverage with federal subsidies.