William H. Pennington Jr.: Make full-time mean full-time for ACA

The Affordable Care Act requires employers with 50 or more “full-time equivalents” to allow their “full-time” employees (who work 30 or more hours per week on average) to enroll in the company’s health insurance plan. But many business owners are finding it nearly impossible to know who those people are because they don’t have time to figure that out or the money to buy software or services to help identify those folks.

In every other set of federal laws, full-time means 40 hours per week. So they are left frustrated and confused by the process and the requirements to document why someone was included or excluded from coverage. By having this lower number of hours equal full-time, many employees (who consider themselves part-time) cannot go and get subsidized coverage through the health insurance marketplace.

The U.S. House of Representatives has already passed the “Save American Workers Act of 2015,” and similar bipartisan legislation is being considered in the Senate.

As someone who works every day with employers of all sizes, I know this legislation would make some of the burdens of implementing the ACA a little more bearable.

This story was originally published April 6, 2015 at 4:24 PM with the headline "William H. Pennington Jr.: Make full-time mean full-time for ACA."