NACS Online
Recently, President Obama signed into law a bipartisan budget package that includes legislation to permanently strike the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) mandatory automatic enrollment provision off the federal books.
The mandatory automatic enrollment provision would have required employers with more than 200 full-time employees to automatically enroll employees into coverage if a plan was not voluntarily chosen or declined by an employee. If this requirement would have remained in effect, employees could have lost the opportunity to select the coverage that best meets their own health-care needs, and employers could have been subject to duplicative and costly regulations.
Striking the ACA’s automatic enrollment provisions has been a top legislative priority for the E-FLEX Coalition, of which NACS is a participant. The advocacy effort to bring this legislation to President Obama for his signature included hundreds of meetings with members of Congress, congressional staff, grassroots efforts and a strong partnership of E-FLEX Coalition members.
“Retailers welcome the repeal of the ACA’s automatic enrollment requirement, a provision that had the potential of forcing employees into a health plan that they did not want or need and creating an administrative nightmare for businesses. Striking this redundant requirement off the books puts health decision-making back in the hands of American workers and their families, and provides employers with relief from potentially problematic and burdensome regulations,” said Christine Pollack, vice president of government affairs at the Retail Industry Leaders Association.
The Employers for Flexibility in Health Care (E-FLEX) is a coalition of leading trade associations and businesses in the retail, supermarket, temporary staffing, restaurant, hospitality, construction and other service-related industries, as well as employer-sponsored health plans insuring millions of American workers. Members of the E-FLEX Coalition have been working to implement the health-care law in ways that help ensure employer-sponsored coverage remains a competitive option for employees.
