Employers react to health

Employers met Wednesday to learn more about the Affordable Care Act and what it means for them. - Katherine Poythress

San Diego employers on Wednesday expressed a mixture of confusion and relief about a recent delay on the federal requirement that businesses with 50 or more workers provide health insurance to employees.

For business owners who were just beginning to understand and comply with the provision, a White House decision to postpone it to 2015 is cause for frustration.

Smashburger San Diego franchise partner David Whisenhunt said he doesn't know what to think about the new deadline.

'It's not going away, it's just a delay, and that makes it hard to make business decisions,' he said. Because of the seasonal and part-time nature of his payroll, he doesn't know today whether he qualifies as a large or small business under the health-care requirements, he explained. And he certainly doesn't know what size his company will be in 2015 when enforcement of the employer mandate kicks in.

'We've just been making hiring decisions in spite of this,' he said.

Whisenhunt was one of about two dozen business owners to attend a health-care reform workshop with Teague Financial Insurance Services at the Blue Shield office in Mission Valley on Wednesday.

Some at the workshop had already spent considerable time restructuring their payroll and hours to ensure they would either remain exempt from the mandate, or minimize the number of employees they would have to cover.

Others had not.

'I think it's going to be a good thing, to have this extra time to figure things out,' said Lori Hurt, who owns Station Tavern & Burgers in South Park. 'We have a lot of employees that this could affect, and I want to make sure I do it right.'

At the workshop she learned that getting the mandate right means, among other things: calculating her employees and holdings accurately, picking the right health insurance plan and educating employees about the new options available to them under the Affordable Care Act.

And now that has been delayed until 2015, many employers must decide when they will make the transition to insurance plans that comply with the new regulations: now or later.

Some businesses may have the option to hold the status quo, as insurance companies offer them the option to lock in their current group plans through December 2014­ - the new date by which they have to purchase a federally compliant plan.

That is what Teague co-founder Jean Strouf is advising her clients to do.

Insurance broker Kara Voelker said most of her clients are welcoming the delay so they can make the complicated payroll calculations using a full-time equivalent formula to determine whether they even fall under the employer mandate.

'Most companies are feeling relieved to have that extra time to make a decision about something that is going to greatly affect their bottom line,' Voelker said.