Employers Lobby to Weaken Insurance Mandate; In Implementing Law, Much Will Ride on the Details; Who Qualifies as a 'Full-Time' Worker?
It is three years before most of the new health-care law kicks in, but already some of America's largest employers are peppering the Internal Revenue Service with concerns that making the changes will be far more complex than they anticipated.</br></br>At issue is one of the law's central requirements: employers with 50 or more full-time workers must offer affordable insurance or pay a penalty. It sounds simple enough. But in crafting the rules, the IRS and two other federal agencies are now tackling basic yet messy questions, such as who counts as a full-time worker and how do companies measure whether insurance is "affordable."</br></br>In one of more than 200 submissions made recently to the IRS, Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Gap Inc., United Parcel Service Inc., Hilton Worldwide Inc. and others have pushed for a lengthy grace period that could stave off penalties for a year or more after certain workers are hired. The result could undermine some of the law's intent to insure those who can't afford coverage.Large employers also have met with White House officials to press their case.</br></br>Retailers, restaurants and other companies that rely on seasonal, temporary and other workers with flexible schedules, say it's hard to figure out who is a full-time worker. That could cause the employer to enroll and drop them from coverage, potentially churning them through new state-run insurance exchanges or the Medicaid federal-state program for the poor, as their hours fluctuated.</br></br>Moreover, companies are worried about another standard that requires they offer care that is "affordable," or roughly 9.5% of an employee's household income. The employers say they can't calculate that without asking employees how much their spouses or dependents earn--a potential privacy violation that may not be verifiable, either.