In Book, Architect of Health Law Predicts a Shift Away From Employer Coverage
WASHINGTON — Ezekiel J. Emanuel, who helped devise the Affordable Care Act, has a vision for how it will eventually work. Democrats hope it will not materialize anytime soon.
Mr. Emanuel expects the law to produce an unadvertised but fundamental shift in where most working Americans get their health insurance — specifically, a sharp drop in the number of employers who offer coverage to their workers. That scale of change would dwarf what took place last fall, when a political firestorm erupted over President Obama’s “if you like your plan you can keep it” pledge.
His former colleagues in the Obama White House say there is no evidence the law will bring “the end of employer-sponsored insurance,” as Mr. Emanuel puts it in his new book with the mouthful of a title, “Reinventing American Health Care: How the Affordable Care Act Will Improve Our Terribly Complex, Blatantly Unjust, Outrageously Expensive, Grossly Inefficient, Error Prone System.”
The law fines large companies that do not offer health coverage, but most have voluntarily offered coverage for many years. The proportion of Massachusetts employers offering health coverage actually increased when the state passed a similar health law a few years ago.
But now Mr. Emanuel thinks that a number of well-known national companies will break the mold and begin a trend. By his estimation, the proportion of private-sector workers who receive health care from employers will fall below 20 percent by 2025. Currently, just under 60 percent of private-sector workers get health care from employers.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/21/us/politics/health-overhaul-may-spell-end-to-employer-coverage-author-emanuel-predicts.html?ref=todayspaper
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