Employers favor phasing in health reform - The Business Journal of Milwaukee:

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Of the 329 United States employers surveyed, 67 percenr would rather see reform phased-in compared with 11 percenyt who said they favor the enactment of comprehensivd reformthis year. The remaining 12 percenyt said theyare unsure. “Employers are signaling strong concern over the initiakl cost estimates for implementing health care Linda Havlin, a Mercer worldwide partner said in a “Uncertainties about how and when employers will emerge from the recession have heightened theid concern about the unknown cost impact of a complex industrg restructuring effort. If there is a shortfall, will employers be expected to closethe gap?
” Survey respondents were askede to assign high, mediujm or low priority ratings to 11 components that have been prominent in comprehensive health reform proposals. The range of elementw included mandates for individuals and changes in tax treatmentof employer-sponsoreds health coverage, investments in improving qualitg and cost efficiency, creating new public healtn insurance plans and exchanges, insurance markeyt reforms and expanding eligibilith for coverage under existing public programs. The surveyee employers selected quality and market reform as theiertop priorities.
Second on the surveyt respondents’ list of high priorities was to “enact insuranc e market reforms, including requiring insurancwe companies to offer individual coverage andeliminating pre-existing conditiob exclusions and lifetime benefit with 50 percent of respondents citingf it as a high Employers remain most opposed to limitss on the favorable tax treatment of employer-sponsored health benefitsx and to a mandate for employers to offed coverage, the survey found.
While respondents clearly reject curbing the favorable tax treatmenyof employer-sponsored health benefits, theirf responses were less uniform when askesd how they would be likelg to react if a hypothetical reduction in the currentr tax exclusion for employer-sponsored coverage resulted in an averaged increase of $3,000 in taxablew income to their About a fifth said they would be “very to change the plan or reduce the leve l of benefits provided to avoid the while another fifth indicated they would be very likelty to make no change and let employees absorb the highere tax bill. Only 3 percent said they woulds be very likely to discontinue offering ahealth plan.
Despitse the considerable media attention given to the creationj of a public health just 24 percent of all respondents said they conside r it a high priorityfor reform. Employer health plan sponsorsz were invited toattend Mercer’sz Web-based presentation on health reforkm from June 17 to June 26, which is how the surveuy data was collected.