Experts: New ACA tax will scale back employee health benefits

Experts: New ACA tax will scale back employee health benefits - San Antonio Express-News
Beginning in 2018, the excise tax will be levied on employers or insurance companies for workplace health plans that exceed certain cost thresholds...
A new tax imposed by the Affordable Care Act that is poised to take effect in 2018 could prompt some employers to curtail or perhaps eliminate health benefits for their workers, experts predict.

Commonly referred to as the “Cadillac” plan tax, it will be levied on those issuing, providing or administering employer-sponsored health insurance exceeding certain cost thresholds: $10,200 annually for a health plan covering one person or $27,500 annually for family coverage.
...But the move has attracted criticism and concern from people who say it will hurt employers’ efforts to provide health insurance to their workers.
“It’s the ultimate of stupidity,” said La Fogata owner Dwight Lieb, who offers health benefits to all 94 of his employees at the San Antonio restaurant.
“You get penalized for giving your employees greater benefits. 
How stupid is that?”
...According to the law, self-insured employers or insurance companies will be taxed 40 percent of any amount spent beyond the defined annual thresholds on an employee’s workplace health plan.
...Most employers will try to avoid the tax altogether by reducing workers’ health benefits, said Janna Hamstra, a San Antonio broker who provides benefit advisory services to businesses.
...“I’ve not heard of a single company who said, ‘Oh, gosh, it’s going to be so hard when we have to pay that 40 percent tax,’” said Hamstra, the owner of Hamstra Benefit Solutions.
“It’s ‘What are we going to do?
What plans do we have to eliminate?
What benefits do we have to eliminate?’
It’s not ‘How are we going to pay the tax?’”
Employers are not going to absorb the costs, Hamstra said. 
But workers using those health plans will feel the pinch..."