HEALTH CARE

RILA is committed to ensuring that employer-sponsored health coverage - the backbone of the U.S. health care system - remains a viable and affordable option for employees and their families.

With the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) employer mandate taking effect next year, long-delayed implementation rules and many remaining unresolved issues, have made retailers’ already dizzying compliance challenge worse, further complicating their efforts to continue to provide employer-sponsored health coverage.

The employer requirements under ACA pose a considerable challenge to all employers, especially retailers whose workforce is highly variable. Retailers face a unique set of challenges that could undermine the ability to continue to provide affordable coverage to their employees.

RILA is engaging closely with Congress and the federal departments and agencies charged with implementing the law in an effort to shape the complex rulemaking process to ensure that:

• The employer-sponsored health system remains a viable option for millions of American workers and families;

• Employers are not being laden by burdensome and costly regulations; and

• Employers are able to create jobs and grow the economy.

 

RILA and the RILA–led Employers for Flexibility in Health Care (E-Flex) Coalition are focusing intensely on critical employer issues under the ACA, and developing regulatory and legislative policy recommendations aimed at preserving affordable employer-sponsored health coverage.  E-Flex is a coalition of leading associations and businesses in the retail, restaurant, hospitality, construction, temporary staffing and other service-related industries, as well as employer-sponsored plans that insure millions of Americans.

RILA and the E-Flex Coalition will continue to focus on rulemakings related to the definition of full-time employees, wait periods, auto-enrollment, affordability and minimum value standards, employer reporting requirements, interaction with insurance Exchanges and federal agencies, and the imposition of federal tax penalties.

RILA continues to urge Congress to address fundamental statutory problems with the ACA, including the law’s onerous auto-enrollment requirement, which requires large employers to automatically enroll employees into a health care plan if the employee fails to voluntarily choose or decline coverage.


2013 OBJECTIVE

RILA will continue engagement with the Obama Administration in order to shape development of ACA implementation rules. In addition, RILA will advocate that Congress address provisions within the law that place substantial and unnecessary burdens on employer-sponsored health coverage.