Today, a key provision of the Affordable Care Act has been delayed by the Obama administration until 2015. This pertains to large employer groups (over 50 lives) where they must offer qualifying and affordable care to all employees or pay an annual per employee tax, which was previously slated to kick in on January 1st, 2014. This change does not affect the individual mandate.
As this is breaking news, we do not yet know how this will affect the launch of the Federal and State exchanges. Open enrollment for individual and small group health coverage via the exchanges is expected to go live on October 1st, 2013.
We will provide updated information as it is received.