Benefits Selling’s annual employer survey finds PPACA is still professionals' biggest challenge:
Benefits Selling’s annual employer survey found that many things are business as usual in the benefits world: For one thing, employers continue to try to restrain costs while attracting and retaining employees with the richest possible benefit packages.
This year, though, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is the big difference. A large majority of respondents — 80 percent — say that health care reform has made them rethink their employee benefit offerings.
(Benefits professionals still have a lot of questions about PPACA. Illustration by Sarah Hanson.)
Rampant confusion
Perhaps the biggest effect of PPACA so far is the confusion it’s created. Many businesses simply don’t understand their choices under the new law.
“I’m very disappointed with the way Obamacare is being handled. People are so confused.” That’s the word from Bruce Axler, principal at Axler Insurance Services in South San Francisco, Calif., where he works with businesses with from two to 25 employees.
“Most of them are wondering what Obamacare is going to do to them,” Axler says. “Some of them need to do nothing; others will need to make changes in order to avoid paying a penalty.”
Businesses of all sizes have upset owners and managers, agrees Ken Neathery, owner of Lone Star Insurance Services in Sherman, Texas. “They don’t understand it, even though they’ve read everything they can get their hands on. The larger the employer, the more questions they have,” he says.
In small groups, Neathery adds, “the questions are ‘What’s going to happen? What’s this tax I’m hearing about? Am I going to have to pay more?’ People know that things are changing this fall and they need to do something by next March, but they don't know anything else. We’re doing our best to tell them that this isn’t a catastrophe.”
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