Employers get more time to comply with Obamacare

The U.S. Treasury Department on Monday announced that it is again delaying implementation of the employer mandate under the Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as Obamacare.

The employer mandate is that part of the sweeping health care reform law that calls for employers with more than 50 full-time employees to provide health insurance to their employees or face penalties. The mandate was supposed to go into effect this year, but was delayed last summer until 2015.

Today, that mandate was pushed back again.

Medium-size businesses, those with between 50 and 99 employees, will now have until 2016 to comply with the mandate, according to a news release from the Treasury Department.

For businesses with more than 100 employees, the employer mandate will still kick in next year, though they will face a slightly lower bar to meet the mandate’s threshold for offering coverage. For 2015, large employers (the vast majority of which already provide their employees with health coverage) will only be required to cover 70 percent of employees, not 95 percent as originally required. It’s only a one-year delay, however, and large employers will face the 95-percent threshold in 2016 and beyond.

 

 

Whit Richardson

About Whit Richardson

Whit Richardson is Business Editor at the Bangor Daily News. He blogs about Maine business, entrepreneurs and the economy.