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August Webinar – Counting Employee Hours Under ACA Eligibility Rules in Light of COVID-19

Tuesday, August 11, 2020 – 2:00 p.m. ET

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) specifies when employers of a certain size must offer their employees health plan coverage. The ACA contains specific rules for counting employee hours when determining employer size and determining which employees must be offered coverage. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many employers have furloughed, laid off, or placed employees on leave of absence. This webinar will help employers understand how to treat employee hours when the employee is not working due to a furlough, lay-off, or leave of absence under the ACA.

Contact your LHD advisor for your client webinar code. The august webinar will:

• Provide an overview of the employer shared responsibility provisions under the ACA
• Define which employers are applicable large employers (ALEs) and discuss how to count employee hours to determine if an employer is an ALE
• Discuss which employee hours are not counted for purposes of determining ALE status, with an emphasis on how employees on furlough, lay-off, or leave of absence are counted for ALE status
• Discuss the two methods for tracking employee hours to determine whether an employee is full-time and must be offered coverage
• Discuss which employee hours are counted and not counted when measuring full-time status for newly hired and ongoing employees and how employee hours while on furlough, lay-off, or leave of absence are counted when determining full-time status
• Discuss how to count days while the employee is on furlough, lay-off, or leave of absence when an employee is in a waiting period for coverage
• Discuss how the break-in-service rules apply for employees that are on furlough, lay-off, or leave of absence
• Discuss how employers must handle coverage when an employee is on furlough, lay-off, or leave of absence while in a stability period under the look-back measurement method
• Discuss how furloughs, lay-offs, and leaves of absence will affect affordability of coverage when an employer is using the federal poverty line, W-2, or rate of pay safe harbors

This 60-minute intermediate level webinar will provide employers with an overview of the employer shared responsibility provisions under the ACA, with an emphasis on determining employee eligibility for group health plan coverage when employees are experiencing reduction in hours due to the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic.

PRESENTER

Melissa Shimizu is an associate in Fisher Phillips’ Irvine office. She focuses on helping employers navigate the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) and other state and federal laws impacting the design, implementation and ongoing compliance of their employee benefit plans and programs. She advises clients with respect to all aspects of employee benefits, including retirement plans, health and other welfare benefit plans.

The presentation will be posted on the UBA website the day before the webinar.