Due in part to a surfeit of attention in the media, most business owners are aware that, depending on how many employees they have, they may have to make employee benefits available to their workers, per the Affordable Care Act. Based on new polling data, a greater percentage of company managers are cognizant of this fact and other features of the health reform law.
Last year, just 37 percent of employers considered themselves to be "very informed" about the ACA and what options they had. This year, close to 70 percent profess to this type of awareness, according to the Transamerica Center for Health Studies.
Approximately 300 employee benefits decision makers were queried in the TCHS poll.
Still, there were those small business owners who may not be as up to date on the ACA as they ought to be. Approximately 60 percent said that they were privy to the Small Health Options Program provided by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services through HealthCare.gov. That's considerably less than 80 percent awareness among all business owners.
"This may be an area where more education is needed," said Hector De La Torre, executive director at TCHS. "Small businesses with fewer than 50 FTE employees are currently the only businesses eligible to participate in SHOP, yet 4 in 10 do not know about it. Businesses of this size employ nearly 34 million workers, according to the Small Business Administration, so it's a significant gap to address."
The SBA has a suite of ACA training materials that business owners can use to learn more about the health reform law, including a breakdown of some of the most common misperceptions about the program.
