The nation's largest provider of security guards plans to discontinue its lowest-cost health plans and steer roughly 55,000 workers to new government-sponsored insurance exchanges for coverage next year, in the latest sign of the fraying ties between employment and health care.
Customer Mildred Gooden, right, looks at washing machines with employee Meti Robi at a Home Depot store last year.
The U.S. arm of Sweden's Securitas AB is among more than 1,200 employers that offer the kind of bare-bones health plans that must be phased out beginning Jan. 1 under the health-care law. Nearly four million people are enrolled in these so-called mini-med plans, which cap benefits to participants, sometimes at as little as $3,000 a year.
"The mini-meds go away and we're not replacing them," said Jim McNulty, a spokesman for Securitas's U.S. operation. "Their option is to go to the exchanges."
Other big employers, including Darden Restaurants Inc., Home Depot Inc. and Trader Joe's Co., say they will stop offering health insurance to part-time workers, and will direct those employees to the state exchanges. Darden, Home Depot and Trader Joe's previously offered mini-meds to their part timers.
The breadth of the trend isn't clear, as employers scramble to finalize their 2014 health-care offerings. Analysts have long speculated that the launch of the insurance exchanges could prompt some employers to drop health coverage. But benefits consultants said they know of few companies now providing insurance that won't offer it to full-time workers next year.
In July the Obama administration may have inadvertently opened a window for some companies to drop coverage by imposing a yearlong delay on penalties for employers that don't offer health insurance.
Until then, Securitas executives said, they had planned to offer guards a health plan with more benefits, but which would have required employees to pay more to participate. Executives subsequently changed course, deciding not to offer insurance to most guards next year, and to develop offerings that comply with the health law for 2015.
Experts disagreed on how an influx of working Americans would affect the exchanges. Dave Axene, a consulting actuary and fellow of the Society of Actuaries, said working people tend to be relatively healthy, and might improve the economics of the exchanges. He questioned how many would enroll, however.
But Ron Fontanetta, a senior health-care practice leader at consulting firm Towers Watson, said the workers most likely to tap the exchanges are those who need the most medical care, potentially forcing insurers to pay out more than projected for claims. "The individuals that have the most urgency to enroll will be those that have health conditions," he said.
Mini-meds are most common in low-wage industries such as retailing, restaurants and agriculture. They are relatively cheap, with premiums around $100 a month or less, depending on their scope.
They typically require small, if any, co-pays and deductibles. Some employers pick up the entire cost, and don't require any employee contributions, which is rare for other types of health insurance.
The flip side is that the benefits are limited, so policy holders suffering serious accidents or illness can face big medical bills. That troubled architects of the health law, which prohibits annual benefit caps.
Jonathan Gruber, one of the law's authors, and an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said mini-meds weren't truly insurance. "If you have insurance that taps out and doesn't protect you against risk, it isn't really insurance," he said.
Employers who offer mini-meds say they are valuable to low-wage workers. They say the prohibition is forcing them to offer better, but more expensive, plans to people who may not be able to afford them or take advantage of them. To reduce costs, many of the new plans require large deductibles before the insurance kicks in.
At Rancho Guadalupe LLC, which grows fruits and vegetables on 4,000 acres near Santa Maria, Calif., roughly half of the 80 to 100 year-round workers now participate in a mini-med that costs workers $50 a month, according to general manager A.J. Cisney.
The plan requires $15 co-pays for a doctor visit and limits benefits to $25,000 a year.
On Jan. 1, the farm will switch to an insurance plan that, except for preventive care and some diagnostic tests, won't kick in until a worker has incurred $6,350 in medical bills. Mr. Cisney said he fears that workers won't see any value and won't enroll. "I'm really concerned what participation is going to look like when we talk to people about this deductible," he said."That's not what we want. We want our people covered."
Marek Family of Cos., a Houston-based home builder, began offering a mini-med about eight years ago, after executives saw that few hourly workers were enrolled in the company's more traditional insurance, said Larry Williams, director of human resources. Marek pays the full premium cost for its plan, which limits an employee's benefits to $60,000 a year.
"Employees loved that plan, that's what they wanted," Mr. Williams said. He said Marek is considering a plan like Guadalupe's with a relatively high deductible, as well as a plan offering limited benefits that complies with the law.
Mr. Williams expects those options to be more costly and said employees likely will have to contribute. Because of the timing of its renewal, Marek has until July 1 to come up with a replacement plan.
Erin Shields, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said the law will improve the quality of health-care offerings and boost employer coverage in the long run. "Consumers will never again have to face bankruptcy when they get sick, because annual limits on coverage will be banned once and for all," she said.
Some workers whose employers don't offer them health insurance will be better off, because they will qualify for subsidies at the government-operated health exchanges that open Tuesday.
Workers aren't eligible for subsidies if their employer offers them comprehensive, affordable coverage.
The subsidies mean that many workers will find themselves better off financially if they their employer doesn't offer coverage, said Sheldon Blumling, a partner in the Irvine, Calif., office of Fisher & Phillips LLP who works on employee benefits,
Trader Joe's said more than 70% of its part-time workers would pay less to buy insurance through the exchanges than through the grocer's existing health plan. After the subsidies, the company said, many employees "should be able to obtain health-care coverage at very little, if any, net cost."
Securitas's 90,000 U.S. employees guard office buildings, hospitals, nuclear-power plants and public arenas such as Yankee Stadium, typically for wages of $10 to $25 an hour, according to Santiago Galaz, president of its North American unit.
About 12,000 employees were enrolled in the company's mini-meds, which cost them $100 a month for a plan with a $50,000 annual limit or $125 per month for a plan with $100,000 annual limit. Mr. McNulty said Securitas plans to tell employees about the change in the next month or two.
About 30% of Securitas's U.S. employees have insurance that complies with the health law, either because they are covered by a union contract or because the Securitas customer to whom they are assigned agreed to pay the additional cost.
Before the Obama administration delayed the employer penalties, Securitas executives had warned customers and investors to expect labor costs to rise 10% next year to cover additional health-insurance expenses.
When the administration delayed the penalties, executives reconsidered. "We're not about to pick up an additional cost we can't get reimbursed for," Mr. McNulty said. "We will try in 2014 to convince more of our customers to help share the burden of health care and expand coverage."
Write to Scott Thurm at scott.thurm@wsj.com
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