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October 31, 2012 at 09:21 AM
EHealth (Nasdaq:EHTH), the parent of the eHealthInsurance.com health insurance exchange, has found that many small business owners have no idea how the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA) is supposed to work.
Starting in 2014, PPACA is supposed to require businesses with 50 or more full-time workers to provide health coverage. Smaller employers are exempt from the requirement.
When eHealth polled 439 small businesses that bought health coverage from the eHealthInsurance.com site, it discovered that only two of the participating companies was big enough to be affected by the PPACA “play or pay” rule. But 34 percent of the employers thought they would face a PPACA coverage mandate.
Only 31 percent of the small employers understood that they were too small to have to worry about paying the PPACA “shared responsibility” penalty if they decided not to offer group health coverage.
About 68 percent said they want to continue to offer group health benefits in 2014 and 29 percent said they would consider dropping health benefits that year.
