On July 2, 2013, the Treasury Department announced that enforcement of the employer shared responsibility payments of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) will be delayed by one year, until 2015. Compliance with the law’s information reporting provisions will be voluntary for 2014, but strongly encouraged. Formal guidance is expected within the next week.

The Administration said they recognized the information reporting required by insurers, self-insured employers and others providing health coverage is complex so they will try to streamline the requirements over the next few months through discussions with stakeholders. Proposed rules on the reporting requirements are expected to be issued this summer. Without the reporting requirements in place, it would be “impractical to determine which employers owe shared responsibility payments,” according to the post on the Treasury Department’s website.

What This Means
There will be no penalties in 2014 on businesses that don’t meet the requirements of the “employer mandate.”

What’s not changing as a result of these delays:

• The Exchanges/Marketplaces
• The individual mandate
• Individuals’ access to premium tax credits
• Any other PPACA provision

Cigna will provide you with additional information after further guidance is published. 

For more details, here is the link to the Treasury blog post, Continuing to Implement the ACA in a Careful, Thoughtful Manner.

We encourage you to bookmark our health care reform website, InformedOnReform.com. We will update communications on the impacted topics as soon as information becomes available.