By Christopher Weaver and Anna Wilde Mathews | The Wall Street Journal – Sun, May 19, 2013 11:06 PM EDT
Employers are increasingly recognizing they may be able to avoid certain penalties under the federal health law by offering very limited plans that can lack key benefits such as hospital coverage.
Benefits advisers and insurance brokers—bucking a commonly held expectation that the law would broadly enrich benefits—are pitching these low-benefit plans around the country. They cover minimal requirements such as preventive services, but often little more. Some of the plans wouldn't cover surgery, X-rays or prenatal care at all. Others will be paired with limited packages to cover additional services, for instance, $100 a day for a hospital visit.
Federal officials say this type of plan, in concept, would appear to qualify as acceptable minimum coverage under the law, and let most employers avoid an across-the-workforce $2,000-per-worker penalty for firms that offer nothing. Employers could still face other penalties they anticipate would be far less costly.
It is unclear how many employers will adopt the strategy, but a handful of companies have signed on and an industry is sprouting around the tactic. More than a dozen brokers and benefit-administrators in 10 states said they were discussing the strategy with their clients.
"There had to be a way out" of the penalty for employers with low-wage workers, said Todd Dorton, a consultant and broker for Gallagher Benefit Services Inc., a unit of Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., who has enrolled several employers in the limited plans.
Pan-American Life Insurance Group Inc. has promoted a package including bare-bones plans, according to brokers in California, Kansas and other states and company documents. Carlo Mulvenna, an executive at New Orleans-based Pan-American, confirmed the firm is developing these types of products, and said it would adjust them as regulators clarify the law.
The idea that such plans would be allowable under the law has emerged only recently. Some benefits advisers still feel they could face regulatory uncertainty. The law requires employers with 50 or more workers to offer coverage to their workers or pay a penalty. Many employers and benefits experts have understood the rules to require robust insurance, covering a list of "essential" benefits such as mental-health services and a high percentage of workers' overall costs. Many employers, particularly in low-wage industries, worry about whether they—or their workers—can afford it.
But a close reading of the rules makes it clear that those mandates affect only plans sponsored by insurers that are sold to small businesses and individuals, federal officials confirm. That affects only about 30 million of the more than 160 million people with private insurance, including 19 million people covered by employers, according to a Citigroup Inc. report. Larger employers, generally with more than 50 workers, need cover only preventive services, without a lifetime or annual dollar-value limit, in order to avoid the across-the-workforce penalty.
Such policies would generally cost far less to provide than paying the penalty or providing more comprehensive benefits, say benefit-services firms. Some low-benefit plans would cost employers between $40 and $100 monthly per employee, according to benefit firms' estimates.
"For certain organizations, it may be an ideal solution to minimize the cost of opting out," said David Ellis, chief executive of Youngtown, Ariz.-based LifeStream Complete Senior Living, which employs about 350 workers, including low-wage housekeepers and kitchen staff. Mr. Ellis, who was recently pitched a low-benefit plan, said it is one option the firm may consider to lower costs and still comply with the law, he said.
Administration officials confirmed in interviews that the skinny plans, in concept, would be sufficient to avoid the across-the-workforce penalty. Several expressed surprise that employers would consider the approach.
"We wouldn't have anticipated that there'd be demand for these types of band-aid plans in 2014," said Robert Kocher, a former White House health adviser who helped shepherd the law. "Our expectation was that employers would offer high quality insurance." Part of the problem: lawmakers left vague the definition of employer-sponsored coverage, opening the door to unexpected interpretations, say people involved in drafting the law.
The low-benefit plans are just one strategy companies are exploring. Major insurers, including UnitedHealth Group Inc., Aetna Inc. and Humana Inc., are offering small companies a chance to renew yearlong contracts toward the end of 2013. Early renewals of plans, particularly for small employers with healthy workforces, could yield significant savings because plans typically don't need to comply with some health law provisions that could raise costs until their first renewal after Jan. 1, 2014.
Insurers and health-benefits administrators are also offering small companies a chance to switch to self-insurance, a form of coverage traditionally used by bigger employers that will face fewer changes under the law. Employers are also considering limiting workers' hours to avoid the coverage requirements that apply only to full-time employees.
"You're looking at ways to avoid being subject to the law," said Christopher F. Koller, health insurance commissioner of Rhode Island.
Regulators worry that some of these strategies, if widely employed, could pose challenges to the new online health-insurance exchanges that are a centerpiece of the health law. Among employees offered low-benefit plans, sicker workers who need more coverage may be most likely to opt out of employer coverage and join the exchanges. That could drive up costs in the marketplaces.
"The whole idea is to get healthy people in and not-so-healthy people in" the marketplaces, said Linda Sheppard, special counsel for the Kansas Insurance Department.
Experts worried that plans lacking hospital or other major benefits could leave workers vulnerable to major accidents and illnesses. "A plan that just covers some doctor visits and preventive care, I wouldn't say that's real health-insurance protection," said Karen Pollitz, a senior fellow at the Kaiser Family Foundation and former federal health official.
Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services said they haven't seen widespread evidence of such strategies. They said the health law would bring new options, including the subsidized exchange plans, to low-income workers, and that most employers who offer coverage now choose to provide much more robust benefits.
"Any activities that take place on the margins by a small number of employers would not have a significant impact on the small group or the individual market," said Mike Hash, director of the department's Office of Health Reform.
Limited plans may not appeal to all workers, and while employers would avoid the broader $2,000-per-worker penalty for all employees not offered coverage, they could still face a $3,000 individual fee for any employee who opts out and gets a subsidized policy on the exchanges.
But the approach could appeal to companies with a lot of low-wage workers such as retailers and restaurant operators, who are willing to bet that those fees would add up slowly because even with subsidies, many workers won't want to pay the cost of the richer exchange coverage.
A full-time worker earning $9 an hour would have to pay as much as $70 a month for a midlevel exchange plan, even with the subsidies, according to Kaiser. At $12 an hour, the workers' share of the premium would rise to as much as $140 a month.
Firms now offering low-cost policies known as mini-meds, generally plans that cap benefits at low levels, could favor the tactic. Companies sought federal health department waivers to cover nearly four million with mini-meds and other similar plans, which will be barred next year. Some employers are "thinking of this as a replacement for the mini-med plan," said Tracy Watts, national leader for health-care reform at Mercer, a consulting unit of Marsh & McLennan Cos.
San Antonio-based Bill Miller Bar-B-Q, a 4,200-worker chain, will replace its own mini-med with a new, skinny plan in July and will aim to price the plan at less than $50 a month, about the same as the current policy, said Barbara Newman, the chain's controller. The new plan will have no dollar limits on benefits, but will cover only preventive services, six annual doctors' visits and generic drugs. X-rays and tests at a local urgent care chain will also be covered. It wouldn't cover surgeries or hospital stays.
Because the coverage is limited, workers who need richer benefits can still go to the exchanges, where plans would likely be cheaper than a more robust plan Bill Miller has historically offered to management and that costs more than $200 per month. The chain plans to pay the $3,000 penalty for each worker who gets an exchange-plan subsidy.
But, "those are going to be the people who will be ill and need a more robust plan," and insuring them directly could cost even more, Ms. Newman said.
Many more workers, she expects, will continue to go without insurance, despite the exchanges and the limited plan. Currently, only one-quarter of workers eligible for the mini-med plan take it. Ms. Newman said, "We really feel like the people who are not taking it now will not take it then."
Tex-Mex restaurant chain El Fenix also said it would offer limited plans to its 1,200 workers, covering doctors visits, preventive care and drugs, but not hospital stays or surgery. "What our goal was all along was to make [offering coverage] financially palatable for the company as a whole, so we didn't do damage and have to let people go or slow down our growth," said Brian Livingston, chief financial officer of Dallas-based Firebird Restaurant Group LLC, owner of El Fenix.
Some benefits advisers worry that since the idea of the low-benefit plans is so new, they could yet invite scrutiny from regulators, and may run afoul of other health law requirements.
John Owens, a broker for the Lewer Agency in Kansas City, Mo., said a large Midwestern convenience store chain is considering signing up for such a policy and is awaiting guidance from regulators.
"What I'm telling people is, this may work, but you better have a plan B," said Andrew Ky Haynes, a Kansas City, Mo.-based benefits lawyer.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/employers-eye-bare-bones-health-030600026.html?goback=%2Egde_2889111_member_242745712
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