Target Drops Health Benefits for Part Time Workers in Latest Obamacare Coverage Disruption

Big-box retailer Target is dropping health
coverage for part-time employees.
Via Politico: 

Target is the latest retail giant to drop health coverage for
part-time employees, citing changes under by the president’s health
care law and low participation in its company health plans.

The company Tuesday night announced a plan to transition
employees working fewer than 30 hours a week onto Obamacare health
insurance exchanges, where they can get subsidized coverage.

Target isn’t the first large employer to end health benefits for
workers. Trader Joe’s and Home Depot have made
similar moves as well. 

These sorts of coverage cutbacks serve as a reminder that it’s
not just individuals buying health coverage on the individual
market who are losing their existing coverage under Obamacare: Some
people who had coverage from their employers are losing it as
well. 

You can expect these sorts of coverage disruptions to
continue.In some cases that will be because employers cease
offering coverage. In others, insurers themselves will end existing
coverage for small businesses and their employees. As The
Washington Post
reported earlier this month, the individual market
cancellations we’ve seen as a result of Obamacare are just the
beginning. There’s a second, larger wave of policy terminations
coming later this year:

According to industry analysts, insurers and state regulators,
the disruption will be far greater, potentially affecting millions
of people who receive insurance through small employers by the end
of 2014.

While some cancellation notices already have gone out, insurers
say the bulk of the letters will be sent in October, shortly before
the next open-enrollment period begins. The timing — right before
the midterm elections — could be difficult for Democrats who are
already fending off Republican attacks about the Affordable Care
Act and its troubled rollout.

Some of the small-business cancellations are occurring because
the policies don’t meet the law’s basic coverage requirements. But
many are related only indirectly to the law; insurers are trying to
move customers to new plans designed to offset the financial and
administrative risks associated with the health-care
overhaul. 

Stories like these offer some insight into why so many of the
health insurance sign-ups under the law
so far appear to be for people who already had coverage rather than
the previously uninsured. There’s a lot of shifting around, as
employers and insurers change or cancel policies to comply with new
mandates or otherwise reshape their health insurance offerings to
fit the new legal environment created by Obamacare. The overall
effect is one of tremendous disruption to the existing health
insurance marketplace.