Aetna Inc. (AET), UnitedHealth Group Inc. (UNH): Will Obamacare Really Give You Better Health Insurance?

3. Whether employers will continue providing coverage will depend greatly on how health insurance exchanges look.
Despite fears of widespread employer abandonment of group health-insurance coverage, the 2012 National Survey of Employer-Sponsored Health Plans from HR consulting firm Mercer found that very few employers plan to cancel their health-insurance benefits after Obamacare takes full effect. But smaller employers were much more likely to say they would cut coverage, with 16% of employers with fewer than 500 employees planning health-plan cuts compared to just 6% of employers with 500 or more workers.

For many, the decision may well hinge on what the individual and small-business health-insurance exchanges under Obamacare end up looking like. States have the choice to run their own exchanges, but if they don’t, the federal government will have exchanges to cover their residents. With an anticipated timeline for open enrollment in the exchanges of Oct. 1, 2013, it should be much clearer in the near future whether it will make sense for employers to drop coverage even in the face of penalties for some businesses that drop their plans, as well as the loss of tax credits that some eligible businesses will get for providing coverage.

Waiting for the details
Unfortunately, there’s still a lot up in the air about how Obamacare will work, especially as different states go through different processes for figuring out what they will offer their citizens under the law. Clearly, some people will get far better health insurance coverage under Obamacare than they do now. That’s one reason that share prices of hospital operators Health Management Associates Inc (NYSE:HMA) and HCA Holdings Inc (NYSE:HCA) have done so well, as costs for the previously uninsured are moved off their books and added to the burden that health insurers and their customers bear. But it’s extremely likely that some people will end up paying more than they do now for coverage they’d be just as happy to keep if they could.

The article Will Obamacare Really Give You Better Health Insurance? originally appeared on Fool.com and is written by Dan Caplinger.

Fool contributor Dan Caplinger has no position in any stocks mentioned. You can follow him on Twitter @DanCaplinger. The Motley Fool recommends UnitedHealth Group (NYSE:UNH) and WellPoint. The Motley Fool owns shares of WellPoint.

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