UN member flagsAnother day, another Affordable Care Act (ACA) exemption…

This week, Congress passed legislation that exempts expatriate health plans from the health care coverage mandated in the ACA. H.R.4414 ensures that U.S. nationals working abroad, and the companies that employ them, are now exempt from the requirements and penalties of the ACA providing they do provide an expatriate health insurance plan.

The exemption was made to ensure domestic insurers offering coverage to these companies and employees were able to compete with foreign insurers that do not have to comply with ACA regulations.  Some of these insurers had been considering moving the divisions and employees that write these expatriate plans overseas.

Expatriate health insurance is an excellent fit for captives and this exemption is great news for employers that have expatriate workers and are considering writing their employee benefits into a captive.

Of course, this is just another reminder that the ACA is very much a work in progress and there are many wrinkles and nuances still to be ironed out. You can be sure that we will stay on top of the ACA developments that matter most to employers and bring you summaries like this one as things develops. For ACA updates in your inbox, as they happen, please sign up for our email updates in the box to the left of this article.

Image credit: WorldIslandInfo.com via flickr

The following two tabs change content below.
Karin Landry
My LinkedIn profile

Karin Landry

Managing Partner at Spring Consulting Group, LLC
Karin Landry, ACI, CLTC, GBA is the Managing Partner for Spring Consulting Group. Karin has over 25 years of experience in the insurance, health care, risk financing, retirement and benefits industries. She is an internationally recognized leader in captive insurance strategy, benefits and financing. She is Past-Chairman of the Board of The Captive Insurance Company Association and a member of the ERISA Industry Committee and was recently appointed to the Board of Directors for Fallon Community Health Plan. She is also a Professor of Employee Benefits and member of the finance committee for the International Center of Captive Insurance Education part of the University of Vermont. Karin’s expertise around benefits allowed her to co-author a white paper for Business Insurance Magazine titled “Captives for Benefits: How to Use a Captive to Save Money and Enhance Benefits Coverage”, which is currently a top seller. Both Vermont and the US Virgin Islands asked Karin for input and guidance with their recent legislative changes. Prior to joining Spring, Karin was President of Watson Wyatt Insurance & Financial Services in the United States and Head of the Health & Welfare division for the eastern region.