By offering other insurance options, “Obamacare has taken the moral imperative away for employers to continue offering coverage,” said Laszewski, the industry consultant. “The days of your father’s health insurance are over.”
Companies have been grappling with insurance costs since well before Obama signed the law, said Aon’s Winkler. Businesses have been curtailing spousal coverage and retiree benefits for more than a decade, he said.
“I cringe when I see headlines that suggest that the Affordable Care Act is driving all this,” Winkler said. “It’s certainly a factor that employers have to be looking at, but it is not the strategy in and of itself.”