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One in five companies with fewer than 500 employees say they are \u201clikely\u201d or \u201cvery likely\u201d to discontinue company-provided healthcare coverage within five years, a survey reveals.<\/p>\n
The reason: The main provisions of Obamacare will be implemented in 2014.<\/p>\n
And 43 percent of those companies expect employees to pay a greater share of healthcare costs this year, according to the survey by Mercer, a human resources and financial services consulting firm.<\/p>\n
Less than 10 percent of larger companies \u2014 with 500 to 4,999 workers \u2014 say they\u2019ll likely drop coverage in five years, as do about five percent of firms with 5,000 or more employees.<\/p>\n
But almost 70 percent of those largest companies, and 60 percent of those with 500 to 4,999 employees, expect workers to pay a larger share of healthcare costs this year.<\/p>\n
Nearly 150 million Americans now rely on company-provided healthcare benefits, and the price of those benefits has doubled in the past decade. The average cost to a large company of covering an employee with a family is now $15,745 a year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.<\/p>\n
But individuals whose coverage is dropped would pay even more, since they do not receive the same tax breaks as an employer and can\u2019t bargain with insurers the way a company can, although some lower-income workers can qualify for subsidies to buy insurance.<\/p>\n
Under the Affordable Care Act, employers with more than 50 workers will eventually have to pay a fine of $2,000 for each employee if they don\u2019t provide coverage, but many could decide simply to pay the fine rather than pay for employees\u2019 coverage, according to The Economist.<\/p>\n
So much for President Obama\u2019s promise that \u201cif you like your healthcare plan, you can keep your healthcare plan.\u201d<\/p>\n
A 2011 survey by consulting firm McKinsey found that 30 percent of employers would \u201cdefinitely or probably\u201d drop coverage after 2014.<\/p>\n
That prediction was thought to be extreme, but later surveys find that around 10 percent of employers feel that way.<\/p>\n
The Mercer survey also found that more than 45 percent of companies with fewer than 500 workers are considering adopting a \u201cdefined contribution\u201d healthcare scheme, whereby employees receive a fixed sum to spend on health insurance rather than company-provided coverage.<\/p>\n
Defined contribution plans make employers\u2019 costs more predictable and employees more conscious of costs. But the danger, The Economist observes, is that employees will \u201cdelay seeking essential treatment for fear of the bill,\u201d which \u201ccould leave companies with a sicker, less productive workforce.\u201d<\/p>\n
Editor’s Note:<\/b><\/p>\n
ALERT:<\/b> \u2018ObamaCare Survival Guide\u2019 Tops Best-Seller Lists as Massive New Law Begins <\/b><\/p>\n
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www.turkishnews.com\/tr\/content\/bagislar-ve-uye-aidatlari\/<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n Turkish foruma vergiden dusulen maddi Desteklerinizi geciktirmeyiniz.<\/b><\/p>\n Support Turkish Forum \u2026 Turkish Foruma Destek veriniz<\/b><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" One in five companies with fewer than 500 employees say they are \u201clikely\u201d or \u201cvery likely\u201d to discontinue company-provided healthcare coverage within five years, a survey reveals. The reason: The main provisions of Obamacare will be implemented in 2014. And 43 percent of those companies expect employees to pay a greater share of healthcare […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":65728,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65676","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65676","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=65676"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65676\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/65728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=65676"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=65676"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=65676"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}