Affordable Coverage 

Ensuring a Healthy Workforce

Fifteen million American jobs are retail jobs.  Every RILA member company offers coverage to employees through self-insured plans available as a result of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA).  Retailers are committed to offering coverage to ensure a healthy, productive workforce.  RILA members also are committed to increasing enrollment where possible to insure a larger pool of individuals and reduce overall plan costs.

To improve sign-up rates for health insurance, many companies offer a variety of plans for different life stages, where possible.  These plans include:

• FSA – Flexible Spending Account.
• HSA – Health Savings Accounts.
• PPO – Preferred Provider Organization.
• HMO – Health Maintenance Organization.

Policy considerations

RILA supports market-based health policies that allow retailers and other employers to provide greater benefit choices to their employees, empower health care purchasers and consumers to make informed decisions, and assist the uninsured in obtaining coverage.

More than 170 million people in the United States enjoy health care benefits sponsored by employers. Competition in the health care arena promotes consumer choice while driving systemic efficiencies and lowering costs.  RILA supports these principles:

• Preserve the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). ERISA streamlines the administration of health care benefits for employers by eliminating the conflicts, ambiguities and peculiarities that arise when states and localities institute disparate regulations. ERISA provides health plan administrators with a uniform set of rules upon which to establish employee health plans.  Simply put, a patchwork of state and local mandates that require individual industries to play by different rules will hinder, not help, the expansion of health care coverage in America.

• Health plans should take into account the fact that different workforces have different needs.  Minimum coverage requirements must recognize variations in workplace composition from industry to industry and business to business.  Variations in average age and gender composition dramatically affect the common needs of health care beneficiaries.  Minimum coverage requirements should not limit the flexibility of employers to craft plans that consider these unique needs.

• The unique characteristics and demands of part-time and seasonal workforces should be given consideration when crafting coverage requirements for these workers.  For example, the transient nature of part-time employees, coupled with their access to other health care options, increases administrative complexities, reporting requirements and vesting periods.