The Obama administration has a new solution to force compliance with the Affordable Care Act (ACA): simply ban businesses from reducing staff in response to the law’s burdensome employer mandate. The administration previously postponed the law’s requirement that all businesses with 50 or more employees provide health insurance until 2015, a year later than required by the ACA. In what is being referred to as “transition relief,” the administration’s latest delay of the employer mandate through 2015 exempts mid-size businesses with 50-99 employees from the requirement, and lowers the requirement for businesses of 100 or more employees from 95 percent to 70 percent staff coverage. Given the costs of insurance, businesses with just over 100 employees have a strong incentive to reduce staff below 100 and take advantage of the exemption. In a tacit admission that the ACA pressures businesses to cut workers, and perhaps to stall further criticisms, the IRS recently released regulations specifically barring employers from reducing staff or hours as a result of the ACA’s employer mandate.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanlegislator.org ...
