Employment Law and Obama Care
When it comes to Obama Care, what do you or don't you need to tell your employees about? As a small business or a large one, there are certain things you need to make your employees aware of. However, there are also certain things you need to be aware of as an employer too. Below we will be going over the things you need to let your employees know about Obama Care and the things you need to be aware of.
Fees or No Fees There is a rumor right now going on about a fee for not telling people who work for you about Obama Care. The rumor is that a single employee was charged over $500,000 a year for not telling anyone about Obama Care. While this IS untrue, you still should be telling them about the benefits of having Obama Care! According to some of the news reports over the past year and a half, if a business has over 50 employees each employee had to have known about and was introduced to Obama Care. If not, then you would be fined $2000 per every year. And that's just a company with 50 employees; imagine the businesses and companies that had 100, 500 or even 5000 employees. They must have really been feeling the stress of this so-called fine! Even though it’s now realized it’s a myth, you still should hold the standard of telling them about Obama Care. If you don't, well, you won't be fined, but you could still get into trouble. Written Notice To Employees If you have a business or a company that is covered by the FLSA, you have to provide a written notice to any and all employees. The things you should be informing them about include:
1- Information about the Health Insurance Marketplace 2- That, depending on how much they make versus what coverage you offer an employer, that they (the employee) may be able to find lower costs on a private insurance provider in the marketplace. 3- The employee also has to be told that IF they buy insurance through the marketplace that they could lose out on employer benefits. 4- You have to give these notices out to both new and old employees the same regardless if they were full time or part time. Rumor of the Fee Many wonders where the rumor of the fine ever came from. Funny enough, if it came from a employment Law Attorney who said something along the lines of the fact that the employer mandate of this provision was overlooked and that as a part of the Affordable Care Act and the FLSA that businesses would be facing penalties if they did not tell their employees about Obama Care. This, of course, coming from a lawyer, opened the floodgates. Not really sure why he would say something like that if it were untrue maybe he was kidding, maybe he was unsure, or misinformed. Either way, this sort of proves you can't believe everything you hear, read or see on the news, television or radio. Sometimes it’s a better idea to actually do your own research and inform yourself on what is legal or illegal. This doesn't mean all lawyers are bad, though, like I said, perhaps they were kidding around or misinformed. One of the best ways to go about the Obama Care program or any employment law is to hire someone that is well-versed in this type of law such as an employment Law Attorney. If your business is in New Jersey you should talk to the best employment law attorney in NJ, these lawyers are knowledgeable at employment law and can go over all of the issues related to the ACA. The Affordable Care Act Notification This is the actual wording from the Affordable Care Act and what things should be included in the notice that employers send to employees, its literal word for word:
‘SEC. 18B. NOTICE TO EMPLOYEES. ‘(a) In General- In accordance with regulations promulgated by the Secretary, an employer to which this Act applies, shall provide to each employee at the time of hiring (or with respect to current employees, not later than March 1, 2013), written notice–
‘(1) informing the employee of the existence of an Exchange, including a description of the services provided by such Exchange, and the manner in which the employee may contact the Exchange to request assistance;
‘(2) if the employer plan’s share of the total allowed costs of benefits provided under the plan is less than 60 percent of such costs, that the employee may be eligible for a premium tax credit under section 36B of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 and a costsharing reduction under section 1402 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act if the employee purchases a qualified health plan through the Exchange; and ‘(3) if the employee purchases a qualified health plan through the Exchange, the employee will lose the employer contribution (if any) to any health benefits plan offered by the employer and that all or a portion of such contribution may be excludable from income for Federal income tax purposes. ‘(B) Effective Date- Subsection (a) shall take effect with respect to employers in a State beginning on March 1, 2013.’ Health Insurance Plan or Not The Department Of Labor also sent out a statement about Obama care and said that no matter what type of business you have, no matter how many employees you have - even if you offer ZERO insurance, you still need to send out notices to any and all of your employees, even people that work as freelancers because they too have a right to the insurance.