The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is not in great health.
The ACA is alive.
For Kim Buckey, one key idea about administering big employee benefit plans and benefit plan communications program is that the ACA is still with us.
Kim Buckey, vice president of client services at DirectPath, a benefit plan enrollment and administration firm based in Birmingham, Alabama, talked about the lingering effects of the ACA in a recent interview.
A year ago, Buckey and her firm's clients were spending time meeting ACA notice and benefits requirements.
This tear, Buckey and DirectPath clients continue to spend time complying with ACA notice and benefits requirements.
The administration of President Donald might like to ease ACA reporting requirements, for example, but, at this point, the ACA Form 1095 health coverage reporting system remains in place.
"Everything is still status quo," Buckey said in the interview. "It's still required."
Buckey is also hearing about cases of employers receiving penalty letters related to ACA filings. Most of the ones she knows about involve coding errors and other errors, not cases of employers owing ACA "employer shared responsibility" penalties because uninsured, full-time employees received premium tax credit subsidies for ACA public exchange plan coverage.
Here are four other benefits topics Buckey talked about during the interview.