Are Employers Anxiously Signing Up 26-Year-Olds?
No. They’re conducting audits to get rid of ineligible dependents:
An audit of a 10,000-person employer will typically uncover 200 to 500 ineligible dependents, said John Fazio, a senior consultant with the employee benefits firm Towers Watson. Removing these people, who cost a company an average of $2,100 a head, translates into annual savings of $420,000 to $1.05 million a year for the employer.
And we are suppoed to be surpirsed at this?
You mean there is no such thing as a free lunch?
This would not be a problem at all if we had personal and portable health insurance.
You all are missing where this is all going. Employers are getting ready to drop their health plans altogether.
If ineligible enrolled dependants cost an average of $2,100 to cover, this suggests the ones most likely to fake eligibility are those with higher than average health costs, who might have to pay more in the individual market. From this we can infer that the new health care provisions requiring employers to cover dependants until age 26 will cause employer plans to incur substantial costs.
I agree with Neil. Employers will stop offering employee health care. But, I don’t think it’s a bad thing. You’ll see a lot of people scramble for coverage, but I think it makes sense in the long run.