Health and Human Services ruled this week that the exchange for small business will be up and running by January 1, 2015. What? January 1, 2015! If everyone is mandated to have insurance by January 1, 2014 why then are they waiting until 2015? We know employers employing less than 50 full time equivalent employees are not mandated to provide health insurance benefits. But lets face it most small employers do provide insurance to their employees. The ones that don't often don't because they can't reach required participation levels to satisfy the insurance carriers. The SHOP as it is known is meant to bridge that problem by not requiring minimum participation. Simply put, an employer can pick a plan and offer to pay a percentage of that plan and any employee that wants can then sign up for it. If he employs 10 employees, under the current rules, at least 8 would have to sign up under his plan. With the SHOP as few as 1 employee could sign up. I do not know if this will affect California or not. Last I heard our SHOP was still on course to be up and running by 2014. I will keep you updated on the status as I find out more.
If you are interested in finding out more about the health care law and how it will affect you, please contact us at 714-680-5900 and we can let you know our next scheduled event. You can also email us at angela@ansainsuranceservices.com .
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