Today, the Supreme Court ruled: Key elements of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) stand.
Immediately, this SCOTUS ruling means:
Their paying customers are protected and healthcare and hospital stocks have soared.
Democrats are breathing a big sigh of relief with President Obama saying, “The ACA is here to stay.”
With no proposed alternative in place, Republicans reportedly “noisily outraged and quietly relieved.”
Long term, we still have some questions:
Companies who employ contract employees and the custom staffing industry (who have been through the wringer in an effort to comply with the ever-evolving ACA) still have some fundamental administrative concerns we need definitively addressed so we can comply with the act and reduce burden:
Basically, anything that plays into eligibility needs to be defined clearly, including:
1. How exactly do we define full time versus part-time and variable hour workers versus non-variable hour workers?
This is one of the most important determinations because full-timers become eligible for coverage. The house proposed changing the definition of full time from 30 to 40 hours a week and bills are being launched all the time to change things.
Similarly, the government has defined a variable hour worker in this way, “An employee is a variable hour employee if, based on the facts and circumstances at the date the employee begins providing services to the employer (the start date), it cannot be determined that the employee is reasonably expected to work on average at least 30 hours per week.”
Can we count on these definitions to be solid? If not, when can we?
2. Clarify what constitutes a break in service:
The break in service guidelines also affects eligibility. We define a break in service as 13 weeks, but there are some who wonder if it’s 26 weeks. What exactly is the break in service rules and are they apt to change?
3. How will the election year affect us?
We can only guess. Here are our predictions.
This is last in our series on the ACA and the contingent workforce. Our first three covered lessons from the first five years, what we can expect from the next five years, and our predictions for the election year.
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