Administration says it will delay Obamacare penalties for large firms
July 2, 2013, 6:25 PM
By Russ Britt
The Treasury Department announced late Tuesday that it will delay penalties for large employers who fail to provide workers with health insurance, due to a flood of questions from the business community about the finer points of President Obama’s health-care overhaul.
Scheduled to begin when the bulk of the health-care law takes effect next year, the administration now will wait until 2015 before enforcing mandatory employer and insurer reporting requirements.
Posting on the Treasury Department’s blog, Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy Mark J. Mazur said: “We have heard concerns about the complexity of the requirements and the need for more time to implement them effectively. We recognize that the vast majority of businesses that will need to do this reporting already provide health insurance to their workers, and we want to make sure it is easy for others to do so.”
Mazur went on to discuss the year delay, saying, “This is designed to meet two goals. First, it will allow us to consider ways to simplify the new reporting requirements consistent with the law. Second, it will provide time to adapt health coverage and reporting systems while employers are moving toward making health coverage affordable and accessible for their employees.”
He said the department would provide instructions on the transition within a week. Rules for meeting provisions of Obamacare will be published this summer, and the administration is looking at ways to streamline reporting for companies that already offer coverage in excess of requirements under the law.
Shortly after Mazur’s post went up, Obama senior advisor Valerie Jarrett issued her own post on the White House blog, titled “We’re Listening to Businesses about the Health Care Law.” It echoed much of what Mazur said, and pointed out that the reporting requirements for employers — even those already in compliance with the law — were more than what businesses expected.
Jarrett wrote: “We have heard the concern that the reporting called for under the law about each worker’s access to and enrollment in health insurance requires new data collection systems and coordination. So we plan to revamp and simplify the reporting process. Some of this detailed reporting may be unnecessary for businesses that more than meet the minimum standards in the law. We will convene employers, insurers and experts to propose a smarter system and, in the interim, suspend reporting for 2014.”
She likened the revamping of the reporting system to that of recent efforts to pare down applications for health insurance to three pages from 21 pages.
Large employers of 50 or more full-time workers are facing fines of $2,000 per worker if they fail to provide health insurance for their full-time employees.
