The employer would not have to pay more premium cost towards a higher paid employee. The 9.5% calculation sets the maximum. Therefore, a higher paid employee could actually afford to contribute more towards the cost.
There has been some talk of new contribution rules. Some are saying that the employer can simply set the ER contribution to be 9.4% of the employee's W2 wage as shown on Box 1 of the W2, and that amount would vary according to the incomes of employees. This may turn out to be the standard... I'm sure the carriers' lawyers will see if it's legal and will let us know.
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Also, I do interpret to be on the employee only portion. However, I do not think this would stop a spouse or child from going to the exchange if the employer family premium is too high. Think the government was just trying to get 2 parent working families to take advantage of their own employer sponsored ins plans.
You are correct about the 2 parent family issue. As YAgents mentioned in a post yesterday, new rules from the IRS says that the employer can not make dependents INELIGIBLE for group plans in order to circumvent the problem. However, the IRS said that the dependents that had to be eligible would be children, not spouses. That is because many businesses encourage the spouse to take their own employer's group plan. This language from the IRS strengthens rather than weakens the claim that it considers the statutory language in PPACA to be that "affordable" is based on 9.5% of the self-only premium for the employee, in spite of the group plan's cost for a family.
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