On Tuesday, the House Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions, and the Subcommittee on Workforce Protections, held a joint hearing to discuss how the Obama administration’s one-year delay of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) employer mandate will affect the workplace.

On July 2, 2013, the Treasury Department announced that it would postpone until 2015 the employer responsibility provisions and accompanying employer and insurer reporting requirements. Section 4980H of the ACA – known as the pay-or-play mandate – requires employers with 50 or more full-time and full-time equivalent employees to either offer employees and their dependents health coverage that meets affordability and “minimum value” requirements, or pay a penalty. Section 6055 of the ACA requires health insurance issuers, self-insuring employers, government agencies, and other providers of health coverage to submit annual information reporting, while section 6056 requires applicable large employers to submit annual information reporting relating to the health insurance that the employer does or does not offer its full-time employees. These provisions were set to take effect as of January 1, 2014. The newly-announced grace period pushes back these obligations until January 1, 2015. Continue reading this entry at Littler's Employee Benefits Counsel.