Employers likely would have better luck predicting winning lottery numbers than how the Supreme Court will rule this summer on the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate. So many benefits practitioners, like Karrie Andes, SPHR, senior benefits manager for Kansas City-based virtual meeting provider PGi, have decided simply not to try to read the legal tea leaves. Rather, Andes and her team – while keeping a close eye on the legal challenges that mounted since the law’s passage two years ago, and this month’s oral arguments before the Supreme Court – opted for a business-as-usual approach to make sure PGi’s health plans first and foremost continued “protecting associates and dependents on our health plan and also helping competitively with attracting talent,” Andes says.
While she and her team immediately implemented certain health care reform changes and opted not to grandfather PGi’s health plans, the company’s 1,700 employees – not the nation’s nine justices – remained their primary focus.
