13 Oct Pace Act redefines small business with respect to ACA
October 8, 2015 – President Barack Obama signed into law H.R. 1624, the Protecting Affordable Coverage for Employees Act of 2015 (“PACE Act”). The PACE Act makes relatively minor changes to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA”), as well as the Public Health Service Act; each of which defines “large” and “small” employers for determining how employers must provide health coverage for their employees.
Republican Senator Mitch McConnell had this to say about the bill, “[It] will help protect small and medium-sized businesses that provide health care to their employees, give states more flexibility to define what constitutes a small business for health insurance purposes so as to protect health benefits for workers, lower health premiums, and reduce cost for taxpayers.”
The PACE Act works to protect smaller employers from increased regulations while granting their employees the option to keep current health insurance plans. Although the small group market is currently defined as 1-50 employees, that definition is set to expand to 1-100 employees in 2016. The new regulations would prevent employers with 51-100 employees from keeping their current health care plans. Plus, the new mandates would cause rates for health care plans to dramatically increase.
However, the PACE Act will allow individual states to decide whether or not to maintain the previous definition of small group market as employers with 1-50 employees.
Contact AWS Insurance today to schedule an appointment with one of our agents, specializing in corporate health insurance, to protect your company from this new legislation.
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