Minimum Hours Essay
What are the minimum amounts of hours employees have to work to be eligible for health benefits?
The implementation of the Affordable Care Act followed by its expiry of the specified 1 year for ‘Transition Relief’ in January, 2016 has created a ripple of different questions in a common man’s mind. Now that the policy is in effect full swing, one such question is the eligibility criteria for receiving the health care benefits from an employer.
As per the guidelines of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the benefits are required to be offered to any Full Time Equivalent employees (FTE) only, when the business employs more than 50 people as full time employee. ACA defines an FTE as any employee who works for at least 30 hours or more for the business …show more content…
The employer must add both these full-time and full-time equivalent workers to find out the exact number of employees to be considered effective under the mandate.
But, the calculation of total hours worked by an FTE can be handled in different ways, resulting in different outputs finally. These methods are as below:
1. Actual Hours: An employer can determine the actual hours of service by provided by the employee from records of hours worked and also the hours for which any payment is made or due. This includes hours of paid leave.
2. Days-worked equivalency: To use a days-worked equivalency method, an employer credits the employee with 8 hours of service for every day that the employee is eligible to be credited with at least 1 hour of service. This includes hours of paid leave.
3. Weeks-worked equivalency: To use a weeks-worked equivalency method, an employer credits the employee with 40 hours of service for every week for which a payment is made or due. This includes hours of paid leave.
Thus, the total number of hours an employee worked will change in each of the 3 methods described
The implementation of the Affordable Care Act followed by its expiry of the specified 1 year for ‘Transition Relief’ in January, 2016 has created a ripple of different questions in a common man’s mind. Now that the policy is in effect full swing, one such question is the eligibility criteria for receiving the health care benefits from an employer.
As per the guidelines of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the benefits are required to be offered to any Full Time Equivalent employees (FTE) only, when the business employs more than 50 people as full time employee. ACA defines an FTE as any employee who works for at least 30 hours or more for the business …show more content…
The employer must add both these full-time and full-time equivalent workers to find out the exact number of employees to be considered effective under the mandate.
But, the calculation of total hours worked by an FTE can be handled in different ways, resulting in different outputs finally. These methods are as below:
1. Actual Hours: An employer can determine the actual hours of service by provided by the employee from records of hours worked and also the hours for which any payment is made or due. This includes hours of paid leave.
2. Days-worked equivalency: To use a days-worked equivalency method, an employer credits the employee with 8 hours of service for every day that the employee is eligible to be credited with at least 1 hour of service. This includes hours of paid leave.
3. Weeks-worked equivalency: To use a weeks-worked equivalency method, an employer credits the employee with 40 hours of service for every week for which a payment is made or due. This includes hours of paid leave.
Thus, the total number of hours an employee worked will change in each of the 3 methods described