Health Care Reform Changes the Landscape for Upcoming Benefits Enrollment ‘Season’

Ann Dee Allen, PR Manager
CliftonLarsonAllen LLP
anndee.allen@cliftonlarsonallen.com

Employee benefits open-enrollment is coming up. Most employers will launch enrollment campaigns in the fall and are now focusing on what health care reform means for their businesses and employees. In the process, they are discovering that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act impacts them in unique ways.

Employee benefits strategies vary widely as each company evaluates the costs, benefits, and potential pitfalls of health care reform. Individual business case studies reveal that reform may reduce costs and ensure continuing health benefits for one employer, and lead to the restructuring of an employee benefits plan for a different employer. In some cases, an employer’s health care costs will decrease even if it pays federal penalties and maintains coverage. In other cases, benefit costs will increase because more employees will enroll in employer-sponsored coverage. In yet another scenario, an employer will be subject to penalties while its employees receive insurance through an exchange, yet both will experience lower costs than they currently pay.

Employers have been using calculators to learn how health care reform will affect their plans and employees. The calculators generate customized reports detailing 2014 costs, coverage, eligibility, penalties, and more, including compliance checklists. Employers who use accurate calculators can estimate health care reform’s net impact on their bottom lines and determine whether to maintain coverage, modify coverage, or drop coverage.

CliftonLarsonAllen (CLA) can help your readers understand the complex issues associated with health care reform and employee benefits as the open-enrollment period begins. CLA uses its Health Insurance and Penalty calculator [ http://www.larsonallen.com/HIP ] and other resources to serve more than 2,300 employers with benefit plans and more than 4,800 health care clients nationwide.

CLA has highly knowledgeable leaders with first-hand knowledge about how companies are responding to reform. Please contact me for interviews and content related to health care and employee benefits.

About CliftonLarsonAllen
CliftonLarsonAllen is one of the nation’s top 10 certified public accounting and consulting firms. Structured to provide clients with highly specialized industry insight, the firm delivers its audit, accounting, tax, consulting, and advisory capabilities from industry-specific perspectives. CliftonLarsonAllen offers unprecedented emphasis on serving privately held businesses and their owners, as well as not-for-profits and governmental entities. The firm has a staff of more than 3,600 professionals, operating from more than 90 offices across the country. For more information about CliftonLarsonAllen, visit www.cliftonlarsonallen.com.

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