A new survey of nearly 900 employers from Mercer finds that more than 90 percent businesses are committed to offering medical coverage, even as they anticipate small cost increases from the provisions in the Affordable Care Act. The results are in line with the vast majority of other business surveys and economic reports and contradict critics’ claims that health reform will force employers to drop coverage.
“Employers have spent the past year studying the new law and developing strategies to deal with the increased costs and administrative burdens,” said Beth Umland, director of research for health and benefits for Mercer. “But they don’t seem to have changed their minds about the value of continuing to offer their employees health coverage”:
Employers — who have already seen enrollment increases as a result of the ACA’s requirement to extend coverage to young adults — anticipate that compliance with some of ACA’s provisions (extending coverage to all employees working on average 30 or more hours per week, auto-enrolling new full-time employees and ensuring that plans pay for at least 60% of covered services) will add “at least another 3 percent to their projected 2014 plan costs, with 15 percent expecting an additional 5 percent or more”:
Read more about the survey here.
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