Surveys find that few employers are dropping health benefits
Here's another predicted Obamacare horror story that's not come true: employers are not dropping health benefits as many critics predicted they would.
A year after the advent of new insurance marketplaces for individuals and small businesses under the health-care law, just 1 percent of employers said they have decided to stop offering health coverage for 2015, one survey said. There was relatively little difference between larger employers and those with fewer than 50 workers, which qualify for new small-business marketplaces, known as SHOPs, that are part of the health-care law.
That survey of more than 3,000 employers, conducted by the Employee Benefit Research Institute and the Society for Human Resource Management, also found relatively little tendency for companies to narrow the groups offered coverage. One in 12 employers said they are eliminating coverage for workers’ spouses, while 1 in 76 said they are dropping insurance for part-time employees. […]
A separate survey, conducted annually by the consulting firm Mercer, found a similar pattern: Fewer employers said they are likely to drop health benefits within the next five years than was the case in Mercer’s most recent previous survey.
Additionally, the Mercer survey found that
the average cost for an employee has risen for next year by 4.6 percent—that's compared to average increase of 7 percent annually in the last 15 years. The slow-down in the rate increase in healthcare costs, then, seems to be happening in the private system as well as Medicare.
Businesses still see benefits as inducement for hiring and keeping qualified workers. The major change so far seems to be that they feel less compelled to also extend those benefits to spouses, now that alternative coverage is available.
So here's one more way that Obamacare didn't break America. Don't expect Republicans to notice, though.
ACA = still working and quite well.
Joe Walsh @WalshFreedom 