Dive Brief:
- Employers are moving past their Cadillac-tax battle under the Affordable Care Act to fight for their tax break as health-plan sponsors, reports Modern Healthcare. The rumored healthcare draft bill would cap the tax break.
- Employers argue that capping the tax break would force them to offer inferior health plans, pass on more costs to employees or stop offering health benefits entirely, which they say would end the employer-sponsored health market.
- The cap was revealed when the Republicans’ plans for an ACA replacement bill were leaked. The actual reveal of the healthcare bill is supposed to be this week, Axios reports.
Dive Insight:
Rather than wait on what promises to be a lengthy deconstruction of the law, employers are shifting to a less arduous battle to keep their tax break as health-plan sponsors.
The shift from fighting the Cadillac tax to fighting for the tax break for health-plan sponsors is a rare battle between employers and pro-business Republicans. The Middle Class Health Benefits Tax Repeal Act of 2017 would rescind the Cadillac tax, which has bipartisan support among lawmakers. The ACA imposes the so-called “Cadillac” on health plans worth more than $27,500 for families and $10,200 for individuals, and has posed a threat to healthcare plan affordability for some time.
The employer-sponsored health insurance market pays for the healthcare coverage of 178 million Americans. Like the upside of the ACA, the market covers millions of people who might not be able to get affordable coverage on their own. Anything that threatens the employer-provided model could turn how healthcare is bought and sold on its head.