GROUP HEALTH BENEFITS CT
The Cafro Agency specializes in Group Health Insurance and Employee Benefits for small companies in New London County CT. If you are an employer in Connecticut and have from one to two hundred fifty employees, we can show you ways to reduce the cost of your benefits packages. The topic of health care benefits, insurance carriers withdrawing from state exchanges and the high cost of premiums is politically charged. Everyone is talking about the possibility of Affordable Care Act replacement.
Could the GOP plan to repeal and replace The Affordable Care Act remove protections for people who have health insurance through their employers? The new MacArthur Amendment may have effects that cross state lines. This amendment would allow states to waive certain insurance market regulations introduced by the ACA. The ACA’s protection for ‘essential health benefits’, ban on annual and lifetime limits, and to cap out-of-pocket spending may go out the window when allowed to apply any state’s definition of essential health benefits.
Similarly, the ACA only requires that plans cap enrollees’ annual out-of-pocket spending on care that is considered essential health benefits. Large employers would be able to impose lifetime limits on healthcare costs and eliminate out of pocket caps. Under current law, allowing large employer plans this type of flexibility has limited impact since all states’ essential health benefit definitions are required to meet basic federal standards. But if each state could set its own definition of essential health benefits, as states would be allowed to do under the MacArthur Amendment, the consequences of allowing this flexibility would be significant.
So with talk of health care reform, how are Small Employer Benefits packages going to be affected? For this and other questions pertaining to your obligations as an employer, call the Cafro Agency. We will unravel the confusion you may have about employee group benefits, health care coverage, and your costs.