Why will companies stop offering health benefits? Because, Emanuel argues in the book — Reinventing American Health Care: How the Affordable Care Act Will Improve Our Terribly Complex, Blatantly Unjust, Outrageously Expensive, Grossly Inefficient, Error Prone System (how’s that for a title?) — the online insurance exchanges will provide employers with a viable alternative for doing so.
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Private exchanges, which are essentially a defined-contribution approach to health benefits, have certainly sparked a lot of interest among employers lately. As many as 33 percent of respondents said private health exchanges would be their preferred approach to managing health care in the next three to five years, up from 5 percent now, according to Aon Hewitt’s Health Care Survey of more than 1,230 employers covering in excess of 10 million employees (Aon happens to be one of the vendors that offers a private exchange; others include Towers Watson, Buck Consultants and many smaller vendors). Brian Poger, CEO of consulting firm Benefitter, said at the just-concluded Health & Benefits Leadership Conference in Las Vegas that for many employees — especially low-wage workers with families – the health coverage available on public exchanges might be a better deal than that provided by their employers, considering that many have cut back or eliminated coverage for spouses and families.
Read the full article at: Human Resource Exceutive Online: “Will Employers Stop Offering Health Benefits?”