Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/107829
Health Care ("You Can't Run and You Can't Hide from Obamacare" continued from page 37) "There is a lot of documentation that employers will be required to provide to employees, and there are time limits on when this needs to be delivered, as well as delivery mechanisms behind that documentation," said Kahle. "There can be fines and other fees attached for not doing so." "Employers of all sizes, large and small, need to realize that their employees are going to have a lot of questions," said NFIB's Kuhlman. "They will need to continue to educate their employees, regardless of whether they are going to offer insurance or not." For example, if they decide not to offer insurance, they will need to educate employees about the state-based exchanges. They will also need to educate employees about their individual responsibilities, such as, in 2014, being required to purchase insurance on their own if they are not going to be covered by someone's group plan. "In sum, 2013 will be a big communication year," states Kuhlman. Sources of Information Where can employers go to get accurate, comprehensive, and up-to-date information on Obamacare in 2013 and 2014? "It is important to stay on top of information as it comes out from HHS, the Department of Labor, and the state websites," replied Kahle. "You should gather this information either daily or, at minimum, weekly. Employers should then rely on their legal, HR, and accounting departments, as well as their brokers, for interpretation." As Truax sees it, there are actually too many sources of "information" available on Obamacare. The problem is that a large percentage of these sources are not reliable. "You need to boil it down to who you're going to trust to get through all of this," he said. He adds that HHS has been slow in getting out the information details, which inevitably leads to periods of much speculation before every HHS release. And the speculation, he says, ends up populating different websites. "Then, when HHS does make the call, the definitive information is available, but the old speculative information is still floating around out there," he said. As a result, Truax believes, employers need to get their information from their brokers/consultants and carriers. "If they don't feel they can trust their broker/consultant, then they need to get a new one," he said, "because this isn't the time to be working with someone they can't trust." n IRS Proposes Rule on Obamacare Employer Health Coverage Mandate On Jan. 2, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) proposed a new regulation clarifying the requirements for companies to provide health insurance to full-time equivalent (FTE) employees under the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare). Under the "Shared Responsibility for Employers Regarding Health Coverage" (or "employer mandate") section of new health care law, companies with 50 or more full-time employees (or an equivalent combination of full- and part-time employees) are required to provide "affordable" health insurance coverage to workers that meet time-in-service qualifications. The proposed rule states that an FTE employee working 130 hours in a calendar month satisfies the 30 hours of work per week requirement. The proposal would prescribe three different methods to determine whether a nonhourly employee qualifies: counting actual hours of service; using a days-worked equivalency, where eight hours of service counts as a day; and using a weeks-worked equivalency, where 40 hours of service per week counts as a week. Companies can apply the methods to different classifications of nonhourly employees, as long as it is done consistently and does not understate their hours-in-service so as to disqualify them from health coverage. New hires will be under a 12-week grace period before their status is reviewed under a "look back" formula, which lays out how to classify variable-hour employees and new hires whose statuses have changed in the first three months of work. Finally, the proposed rule would require employer plans to offer coverage to a qualifying employee's dependents, defined as children under the age of 26. Companies will not be required to include an employee's spouse in their medical plans. The IRS has provided a "frequently asked questions" page at irs.gov. Comments to the proposed rule are due March 18. A public hearing is scheduled for April 23. 38 | www.cedmag.com | Construction Equipment Distribution | February 2013 34_Obamacare_Feature_KP.indd 38 1/30/13 3:12 PM