On November 2nd, 2015, a law was enacted to repeal a feature of the Affordable Care Act that was not yet effective —- the Automatic Enrollment requirement.
While neither final regulations nor a final effective date had ever been published for this component of the ACA, it has no doubt been a discussion point for employers, brokers, and insurance carriers during strategy sessions.
However, this requirement will not take effect at any point, and employers will not be required to automatically enroll employees in their group health plan coverage.
If this requirement had not been repealed, then certain large employers that offered health coverage would have been required to automatically enroll new employees (and re-enroll current employees) in one of the employer’s health plans, subject to any permissible waiting period.
For more information on this change, we encourage all clients to log-in to the CBGconnect portal and download the corresponding Compliance Bulletin on this topic.