Employers favor phasing in health reform - Wichita Business Journal:

tenamup.wordpress.com
Of the 329 United States employerss surveyed, 67 percent would rather see reformj phased-in compared with 11 percentg who said they favor the enactmeny of comprehensive reformthis year. The remainingg 12 percent said theyare “Employers are signaling strong concern over the initiakl cost estimates for implementing health care reform,” Linda Havlin, a Mercee worldwide partner said in a statement. “Uncertainties about how and when employeres will emerge from the recessiomn have heightened their concern abouft the unknown cost impact of a complex industrtyrestructuring effort. If there is a shortfall, will employers be expectedr to closethe gap?
” Survey respondents were asked to assigj high, medium or low priority ratings to 11 components that have been prominentr in comprehensive health reform proposals. The range of element s included mandates for individualsand employers, changes in tax treatmentr of employer-sponsored health coverage, investments in improvinyg quality and cost efficiency, creating new publivc health insurance plans and exchanges, insurance market reforms and expandint eligibility for coverage under existing public The surveyed employers selected quality and market reform as theirt top priorities.
Second on the survey list of high priorities wasto “enacty insurance market reforms, includintg requiring insurance companies to offer individual coverage and eliminating pre-existing condition exclusions and lifetime benefigt limits,” with 50 percent of respondentxs citing it as a high priority. Employerw remain most opposed to limits on the favorables tax treatmentof employer-sponsored health benefits and to a mandate for employers to offer coverage, the survey found.
Whil e respondents clearly reject curbing the favorablde tax treatmentof employer-sponsored healtu benefits, their responses were less uniform when askedd how they would be likelgy to react if a hypotheticap reduction in the current tax exclusion for employer-sponsorex coverage resulted in an averages increase of $3,000 in taxable income to theie employees. About a fifth said they would be “vert likely” to change the plan or reducw the level of benefits provided to avoid the increase, while another fifth indicatee they would be very likelhy to make no change and let employeesx absorb the higher tax bill.
Only 3 percenf said they would be very likely to discontinus offering ahealth plan. Despite the considerable media attention given to the creation of a publichealth plan, just 24 percent of all respondents said they considere it a high priority for reform. Employer healtgh plan sponsors were invitex toattend Mercer’s Web-based presentation on healtj reform from June 17 to June 26, which is how the surveu data was collected.