Any hopes that large employers would be penalized for failing to offer affordable insurance coverage to the spouses and dependent children of their employees under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) were recently dashed by a proposed interpretation of the law from the Obama Administration.
The central motivation for the switch is to shift the risk of rising health insurance costs from employers to employees, thereby undermining a multi-generational compact between management and labor.
The former director of benefits at Darden Restaurants Inc. from 1988 until 2000 argues that moving from a defined-benefit system to a defined-contribution benefit system operates as a "win-win" for corporations and their employees.