The Early Retiree Reinsurance Program – created under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to help employers offset the costs of maintaining early retiree health benefits – may get another $5 billion worth of funds thanks to a bill introduced in the Senate this spring. However, some industry insiders don’t expect the bill to gain much traction.
“I’m sure there are employers who have early retiree coverage, which tends to be fairly expensive, who might have thought, ‘Let’s get out of this and let them go into the exchanges in 2014,’” says Fran Bruno, an attorney and principal with Mercer’s Washington Resource Group. “And I think this program was designed to ease the expense of early retiree programs for the next couple of years so employers and plan sponsors would stay in the game a little bit longer and not dump everybody into the exchanges.”
