Aitken's advice came during the Society for Human Resource Management's (SHRM) recent annual Conference and Exposition in San Diego. Aitken is SHRM's director, government affairs.

Will the Employer Pay a Penalty Beginning in 2014?

In 2014, certain employers will have to pay a penalty if their health care offerings don't meet PPACA standards. Aitken offers a decision tree for employers:

First, are you a large employer? You are if you had at least 50 full-time equivalent workers including full time (30+ hours per week) and part-time workers (prorated) and excluding season workers (up to 120 days per year).

If no, there is no penalty.
If yes, Are any of your full-time employees in an exchange plan and receiving a premium credit?
If no, there is no penalty.
If yes, Do you have more than 30 full-time employees?
If no, there is no penalty.
If yes, Do you provide health insurance?
If no, pay a monthly penalty of 1/12 x $2,000 x (Number of full-time employees – 30)
If yes, pay monthly penalty, the lesser of:
1/12 x $2,000 x (Number of full-time employees – 30)
or
1/12 x $3,000 x (Number of full-time employees who receive credits for exchange coverage)

Source: Congressional Research Service analysis of P.L. 111-148 & P.L. 111-152

BLR's SmartPolicies gives you 350 HR policies, prewritten for you, ready to customize or use as is. Click here to examine it at no cost or risk.

HR Considerations

Aitken recommends that HR managers consider the following:

• Brief senior leadership on the new law and potential impact on organizations' health plan(s).
• Determine whether all plan designs satisfy the “minimum essential coverage” requirements.
• Review definition of coverage eligibility in health care plan.
• Adjust waiting period definition if more than 90 days.
• Estimate number of potential subsidy and voucher eligible employees.

Healthcare Spending Accounts

With regard to healthcare spending accounts, Aitken says the new law:

• Caps health FSA annual contributions to $2,500 in 2013.
• Excludes over-the-counter medications (unless prescribed by a doctor) as reimbursable expenses  under FSAs, health reimbursement accounts (HRAs), medical spending accounts (MSAs), and health spending accounts (HSAs) in 2011.
• Penalties on nonmedical HSA distributions are increased to 20 percent in 2011.

Nursing Mothers

The PPACA amends the FLSA to require employers of 50 or more to:

• Furnish “reasonable break time for an employee to express *** milk for her nursing child.”
• Provide a place where the employee can express *** milk. The place must be somewhere other than a bathroom and must be “shielded from view and free from intrusion from coworkers and the public.”

This requirement appears to be effective immediately, says Aitken, although regulatory guidance should provide clarification.

And that seems to sum up the status of PPACA: Regulatory guidance should provide clarification.

You'll clearly be rewriting your healthcare policies pretty regularly for the next decade. And what about all your other policies? Detailed? Accurate? Up to date? Our editors estimate that for most companies, there are 50 or so policies that need regular updating (or maybe need to be written). It's easy to let it slide, but you can't afford to back-burner work on your policies—they're your only hope for consistent and compliant management that avoid lawsuits.

Fortunately, BLR's editors have done most of the work for you in their extraordinary program called SmartPolicies.

Don't struggle with those policies! We've already written them for you, and at less than $1 each. Inspect BLR's SmartPolicies at no cost or risk.

SmartPolicies' expert authors have already worked through the critical issues on some 100 policy topics and have prewritten the policies for you.

In all, SmartPolicies contains some 350 policies, arranged alphabetically from absenteeism and blogging to cell phone safety, EEO, voice mail, and workers' compensation. What's more, the CD format makes these policies easily customizable. Just add your company specifics or use as is.

Just as important, as regulations and court decisions clarify your responsibilities on workplace issues, the policies are updated—or new ones are added—as needed, every quarter, as a standard part of the program.

SmartPolicies is available to HR Daily Advisor subscribers on a 30-day evaluation basis at no cost or risk ... even for return postage. If you'd like to have a look at it, let us know, and we'll be happy to arrange it.

More Articles on HR Policies and Procedures