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September 04, 2012 at 10:09 AM
Federal regulators have come out with another of the many batches of guidance that employers and their advisors will need to implement the “health coverage access” provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA).
The PPACA pay-or-play provisions, which are officially known as the “employer shared responsibility provisions,” will require large and midsize employers to choose between providing health coverage for full-time employees or paying a penalty.
Employers will not have to offer coverage to any employees, but a coverage access section that’s separate from the play-or-play provision will require employers that do offer major medical coverage to limit any waiting periods that occur before coverage begins to 90 or fewer days.
Benefits specialists have been asking regulators many questions about how federal agencies will interpret the 90-day waiting period limit, especially when employers are looking at new employees who may end up working more hours than expected.
Three agencies — the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA), and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) — now have addressed some questions about the 90-day waiting period limit in a batch of guidance posted on the IRS website as IRS Notice 2012-59.
In the guidance, regulators have defined the term “waiting period” to be “the period of time that must pass before coverage for an employee or dependent who is otherwise eligible to enroll under the terms of the plan can become effective.”
“Being eligible for coverage” will mean “having met the plan’s substantive eligibility conditions (such as being in an eligible job classification or achieving job-related licensure requirements specified in the plan’s terms),” officials say.
Federal agencies will not consider an employer health plan or insurance issuer to have violated the waiting period limit if a worker is slow to decide whether to take up coverage, officials say.
