In the aftermath of President-elect Donald Trump’s surprise victory last month, the top employee benefit concern among employers remains their role on the Affordable Care Act. According to a survey of 800 employers conducted by brokerage solution provider Aon, nearly half — 48% — responded that the employer mandate is their biggest concern for the new administration.
According to J.D. Piro, head of the Aon’s law group, the concern stems from whether or not Trump will repeal and replace Obamacare and what plans the 115th Congress has for Medicare.
“It’s all of those [issues] and the employer mandate which has the reporting obligations, the disclosure obligations, 1094 and 1095 forms and the service tracking ... all of that goes into the ACA. The concern is, is it going to be dropped, expanded or modified in some way?” Piro tells EBN.
“Employers have all sorts of questions about that,” he adds.
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The employer mandate was by far the top employer concern, according to the Aon survey, which was administered after the election. “Prescription drug costs” received 17% of responses and the “excise tax” received 15% of respondents’ attention. “Tax exclusion limitations on employer-sponsored healthcare” garnered 10% of votes while “paid leave laws” and “employee wellness programs” trailed at 8% and 2%, respectively.
The results didn’t surprise Piro. The employer mandate “is something employers had to get up to speed on and learn how to administer in a very short period of time. It was so complex that it was delayed for a year. It’s not yet part of the framework, and people are still addressing how to comply with it,” he says.
Looking ahead
While Piro declined to make any predictions about what the new administration will accomplish in terms of healthcare, he does think Congress will act quickly, if at least symbolically.
“I think something will happen in 2017. The most likely scenario is Republicans will pass some sort of repeal bill in the first 100 days of the new administration, but they will put off the effective date of the repeal until 2018 or 2019,” he says. “It will be somewhere down the road so they can decide when and what the replacement is going to be.”
The sheer complexity of ACA and Medicare will not make its repeal an easy matter for either the new Trump administration or Congress.
“This is an interconnected web of laws and rulings and the ACA affects every sector of healthcare. It’s thousands of pages of regulations,” Piro says. “Repealing it is not as easy as turning off a light switch or unplugging a computer and plugging it back in again.”
“A lot of people are affected by ACA and you have to consider what the impact is going to be.”
