Obamacare and Its Impact on Group Health Plans, Part 1


As the leading expert on individual, group, and ancillary health insurance here at Empower Brokerage, Jeff Hess knows what he’s talking about, and we want to share his infinite knowledge with you! Check out the video below to learn how Obamacare has affected group health insurance.

To start, group insurance is an employer-sponsored plan that you get where you work. What some don’t understand is that the Affordable Care Act (ACA), a.k.a. Obamacare, has affected group plans as much as the individual plans either on-marketplace or off-marketplace.

High Premiums

For group health plans, the rates have gone way up same as individual healthcare so it is definitely affected. Moreover, it’s making the employee-only cost go skyrocketing. In other words, the employer’s expenses along with the employee’s expenses have gone up a lot. This causes the employer to not be able to afford and help pay for dependent costs, i.e. spousal, children, and overall family costs. As a result, the employers are having to cut the benefits out because of the increase in premiums. In addition to high premiums, group plans have the bronze, silver, gold, and platinum plans same as the individual side.

Rising Deductibles

Rather than having a low deductible, which many group plans used to have a few years ago, deductibles have risen. Rather than having $1,000 deductible for a group plan, it’s $3,500. To keep the costs down, some plans have $5,000 annualized deductibles. Still, it’s higher than it used to be. Consequently, the employers pass the spousal and dependent insurance costs on to the employee. With the added expenses, employees have to look for insurance elsewhere so as to cover familial costs. This is the major way in which Obamacare has affected small group health. It does affects everybody from the employer down to the employee and their family.

Obamacare has definitely caused a big ripple effect. Whereas most people thought it was going to affect individuals not group, it has affected all health plans for individuals under age 65 across the board.


Since insurance is oftentimes overwhelmingly confusing, we want to shed light on this industry by answering YOUR questions.  So if you have any questions or concerns about group plans, comment below and your question may be the topic of our next video!

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