At today's management meeting at work, the ED talked about negotiations that were going on with the union regarding our health care coverage, and an issue was raised that I don't remember hearing about at all during the health care debate.
According to our HR manager, our excellent health care coverage will be "grandfathered in" as of the date HCR goes into effect (well, at least one of the several dates). This means that we can keep our current coverage.
After a certain point in time, however, if we make any changes in our "plan design", we would risk losing our grandfather status, and if that happened, we would be forced to offer only the standard, federally-mandated plan, which would be significantly worse that what we currently enjoy. Any company that is not grandfathered in, in other words, will only be allowed to offer the federally-mandated health care plan, and nothing better.
From my reading of various sources about HCR, I knew that for employers of a certain size, there would be a minimum level of coverage that they would now be required to offer to their employees. What I hadn't heard, however, was that there would also be some kind of "maximum" level of service, above which employers would also be prohibited from going, unless they were grandfathered in.
My HR manager said that the goal was to get every employer to eventually offer the exact same health care coverage so that health care would no longer be a factor in choosing which employer to work for.
I guess I can see the logic there, but it's hard for me to imagine that there's a law that says that you're not allowed to offer "too good" of a health care plan. That would be like a law saying that the minimum wage is also the maximum wage -- nobody is allowed to make any more or less.
But again, I'd not previously heard of this provision, and my HR manager may not know what the hell she's talking about. Does anyone know about this?
UPDATE: h/t to MindRayge in the comments. I think what HR was referring to was the "Cadillac" tax, which I had in fact heard of during the HCR debate. We probably have a Cadillac plan, and what I hadn't heard of, but I guess the rule is that you won't pay that tax if you already have a Cadillac plan as of "X" date. But if you acquire a new Cadillac plan after that date, you will pay the tax.
So, it's not that we'd be prohibited from having exceptional coverage, but that we'll be penalized so harshly for it, that it wouldn't be worth it. She's advising the ED so as to avoid getting hit with the Cadillac tax.