This is part of an ongoing series of posts examining the Affordable Care Act, including previous posts on health insurance exchanges,  rate review and temporary high risk pools. For links to previous posts and additional resources, please visit the health care reform page on our website. 

Employer-based health insurance coverage is the single largest pillar of the American health insurance system. Unemployment and rising costs continue to erode employer-based coverage, but more than half of all Americans – 169 million -  are still insured through employers.  The federal tax code has long encouraged employers to provide coverage by making employer health care expenditures tax-deductible.

The new federal health care law, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), aims to expand health insurance coverage in the United States in part by strengthening employer-based coverage. The law provides sizable tax credits to small businesses (≤25 employees) that offer insurance. Beginning in 2014, large employers (≥50 employees) will have new responsibilities to provide coverage.  Known as the ‘play or pay’ provision, the law outlines that:

• If a large employer does not offer coverage and any of its employees receives a premium subsidy through a health insurance exchange, it will be subject to a fee of $2,000 per full-time employee (in excess of 30 employees);
• Large employers that offer only unaffordable coverage to workers will also be subject to a fee if employees receive subsidized coverage through an exchange;
• Large employers must automatically enroll employees into their lowest-cost plan if the employee does not sign-up for or opt-out of the employer’s coverage. Read the rest of this entry »

As we noted right after the numbers were  released, last week’s Census Bureau report on health insurance coverage provided some unexpectedly good news for Oklahoma. While the nation as a whole saw an increase in the number of uninsured, which has now reached 46.3 million, Oklahoma saw a substantial drop in both its number and rate of uninsured. Using the 2-year averages recommended by the Bureau when reporting state-level data, Oklahoma’s  uninsured rate for  persons of all ages fell from 18.3 percent in 2006-07 to 15.9 percent in 2007-08. The reported number of uninsured Oklahomans declined from 646,000 in 2006-07 to 565,000 in 2007-08. Oklahoma’s  2-year average uninsured rate now exceeds the national average by less than one percentage point (15.3 percent national to 15.9 percent Oklahoma). Read the rest of this entry »