by Vikita Poindexter, SPHR

After months of wrangling in Washington, President Obama has signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act- arguably the most far reached piece of social legislation passed in the last several decades. Now, employers around the county are scrambling to figure out what the upcoming changes mean for them and their employers.

It’s a huge challenge, because federal regulators haven’t yet written the rules implementing the new law.  What is clear is that you’re in for some big changes to your healthcare benefits from an extension of dependent coverage and a ban on annual ban lifetime coverage caps, to limits on flexible spending accounts distributions- as well as penalties if you fail to provide the right coverage for your workers.

And you don’t have a lot of time to get ready.  While some of these changes to don’t go into effect until 2014, others will become effective as early as this fall. So what does that mean for you the employer?  Well as if you didn’t have enough to comply with, now you have to get prepared for these changes.

Proactive preparation is imperative for employers.  You will need to know what the changes mean, when they’re taking effect and what you should do right now to prepare your organization and your employees for what lies ahead.

Some of the questions that you need to be getting the answers on is how will this affect you and your employees.  Just don’t take for granted that these new changes do not impact or apply to you.  You could be courting disaster.

With that said do you know whether you’ll be legally required to offer health insurance to your employees or penalized if the coverage you’re offering isn’t considered good enough? Do you know how and if you qualify for the tax credits and premium reimbursements that are available in certain situations.  Did you know that you need to know if your healthcare plan will be classified as a “Cadillac plans, subject to new excise taxes as “excess benefits?

How about what is changing with the changing contribution limits and distributions allowance for healthcare flexible spending accounts such as HSA’s, HRS’s and FAS.  How will the new coverage restrict such as annual and lifetime benefits caps and prohibitions against denying coverage for preexisting conditions will affect your group health plan.  When the new state created insurance exchanges will be launched and how they’ll change the way you purchase coverage. 

There are other special rules that will be going into effect, such as mandated lactation breaks and locations to bans on eligibility rules for health coverage that favor your higher paid workers.  It’s imperative to know what the best practices are for working with your healthcare brokers and vendors to prepare for these changes and how will you prep your employee communications plans ahead of time so that you can quickly roll out information as the new regulations go into effect.

As you can see, it is a little more complicated that just making a few changes.  Make sure that you are doing your due diligence.  Once you have this mastered, it will be time to tackle Immigration. 

Do you E-verify.  Stay tuned for more information.

Vikita Poindexter, SPHR is the President of Poindexter Consulting Group, Inc. specializing in Human Resources in Temecula, CA.  For more information visit www.pcghr.net or (951) 926-9069.