Another Delay

From USA Today:
"Another part of the Affordable Care Act delayed for a year"

The Obama administration Monday announced another delay in the implementation of the requirement that employers provide health insurance for their employees. Businesses with more than 50 employees but fewer than 100 will have an extra year to phase in health care coverage of employees who work more than 30 hours a week, Treasury Department officials said. Employers with more than 100 employers will be subject to employee-coverage rules under the Affordable Care Act beginning in January 2015. The mandate to provide insurance had already been delayed one year.

Republicans, many of whom co-sponsored a bill asking that the employer mandate be delayed until 2015, immediately denounced the move and called for the delay to be extended to individuals. Anyone who does not sign up for health insurance in 2014 is subject to a fee at tax time. In 2014, that fee is 1% of annual household income or $95 per person, and $47.50 per child. It increases every year. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., said the president "selectively delays" parts of the law to avoid negative consequences. "Much like the individual mandate, the business mandate is bad for middle-class families and will harm economic growth, but the answer to this problem is not random unilateral changes, stoking uncertainty," Cantor said. Volunteer firefighters, part-time teachers and adjunct professors who teach less than 15 hours a week will not be counted as full-time employees, according to a rule released Monday. The delay announced last July fueled calls from the law's Republican opponents that the entire law needed to be delayed or repealed, which President Obama and congressional Democrats refused to do. The federal and state exchanges where people can buy health insurance opened on time Oct. 1 but were immediately plagued by outages and glitches that slowed enrollment to a crawl until the site was fixed Nov. 30. Since then, more than 3 million have bought insurance through the exchanges. The new rule gives employers more time to expand coverage or to provide health insurance if they have never done so before. Those who do not have insurance through their employers may sign up for health insurance at www.HealthCare.gov. Most Americans who make less than 400% of the federal poverty level, or $94,200 for a family of four, are eligible for subsidies to help pay for insurance. Officials say about 2% of businesses have between 50 and 99 employees. About 96% of businesses have fewer than 50 employees. Businesses with more than 100 employees must offer coverage to 70% of their full-time employees in 2015 and 95% of their employees in 2016. Employers will need to certify on a form that they did not drop employees to avoid providing coverage.

^ This is one more delay to the "great" Obamacare. ^

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/02/10/aca-no-longer-applies-to-50-employees-and-under-in-2015/5370055/