While we haggle over health insurance premiums, we need to keep in mind that for three years insurance through the ACA exchanges is protected from high-risk individuals by reinsurance payments from health insurers in the individual and group markets (including self-insured employer plans). Section 1341 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA).
In other words, until these payments expire (assuming they do), premiums charged by exchange insurers are not fully credible because some of the risk is being subsidized.
The good news for employers and by extension their employees is that the proposed per plan participant fee is to drop in 2015 and 2016.
The contribution rate for 2015 is $44 per covered life; it was $63 per covered life for 2014.
The proposed regulations set the TRP fee at $27 per enrollee for the 2016 benefit year.
To keep this in perspective if you work for a large company with say 2000 employees and perhaps 3,400 individuals covered by health insurance, your employer will pay a fee of $149,600 in 2014.
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