Get the most affordable MEC plans on the market!
Minimum essential coverage (MEC) plans are part of federal legislation that aims to make good healthcare more affordable. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) sets minimum requirements for healthcare coverage that employers with full-time employees must offer. MagnaCare offers MyMEC plans for companies seeking to meet MEC requirements. MyMEC plans are self-funded, which means they are exempt from state coverage mandates and state taxes.
Why are companies choosing
MyMEC plans from MagnaCare?
MEC plans have detailed requirements for providing coverage to employees. Employers who fail to provide sufficient coverage may face costly fines. MyMEC plans from MagnaCare overcome these obstacles by offering a self-funded option exempt from coverage mandates and state taxes. By choosing a self-funded plan rather than going through an insurer, you can also avoid arbitrary rate hikes.
Here are a few additional benefits these plans offer:
We offer three levels of MyMEC plans.
Use them alone or add them to the other benefits options you offer. Combining MEC plans with additional coverage provides more extensive benefits, offering a personalized healthcare solution — often at much lower prices than employer-sponsored plans. Consider switching during your enrollment period.
Our MyMEC Basic plan empowers your employees to care for their health while helping you control costs. This level of plan includes:
- Preventive and wellness services
- Prescription discount cards
- Optional coverage for Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA), vision, and telemedicine services
Your employees get coverage for up to 64 preventive checkups,
screenings, and tests, including:
- 15 preventive services for adults, such as diet counseling and cancer screenings
- 23 preventive services for women, such as pregnancy screenings and mental health counseling
- 26 preventive services for children, such as blood tests and vaccines
Offer your employees even more healthcare benefits with the MyMEC Enhanced plan. This plan covers your employees for:
- Preventive and wellness services
- Primary care office visits
- Specialist office visits
- Urgent care services
- Outpatient X-rays
- Laboratories
- Emergency room services
- Prescription discount cards
- Optional coverage for COBRA, vision, and telemedicine services
Your employees can rest easy knowing their MyMEC Enhanced plan covers their provider visits, labs, X-rays, and other medical essentials.
The MyMEC Premier plan offers the highest level of coverage. It gives your employees access to a wide range of health benefits, including:
- Preventive and wellness services
- Primary care office visits
- Specialist office visits
- Urgent care services
- Outpatient X-rays
- Laboratories
- Emergency room services
- Prescription discount cards
- Prescription drug benefits
- Optional coverage for COBRA, vision, and telemedicine services
With emergency room and same-day surgery coverage, your employees will gain peace of mind knowing they’re covered in any situation.
Building deep relationships with our clients
Our account management and customer service teams are committed to helping you find and maintain the best health plans and management services for your business. We are always available to help you with your needs. You can contact us 24/7 to receive assistance and get answers to your questions.
Affordable Care Act (ACA) requirements
Under the ACA, employers must offer their employees health insurance or pay a penalty, which can cost $2,750 per full-time employee. Even if you only have a small number of employees, the monetary penalty can add up quickly and impact your company’s bottom line.
MyMEC eliminates this costly penalty by covering wellness-related and preventive tests and treatments. If you have two or more full-time employees, consider one of our MyMEC plans.
The benefits of our health plan management services
As an employer, you oversee countless tasks to keep your operations running smoothly. Managing healthcare benefits is yet another item to add to your to-do list. Working with MagnaCare gives you MEC services that make managing your healthcare benefits more convenient, providing a better experience for you and your employees. Our services include:
When you sign up for a MyMEC plan, you can also benefit from our health plan management services. We have a team of in-house clinical experts to ensure your employees get the best care at the most affordable cost.
Higher health plan prices don’t necessarily correspond to better health outcomes. At MagnaCare, we developed several innovative programs to reduce medical costs while enhancing the care your members receive. We’ll review claims and evaluate services to help eliminate waste.
You can save your business time and money by letting us handle the claims process. Leave health plan management to our experts and stay focused on your core business needs.
Understanding Minimum Essential Coverage (MEC)
Minimum essential coverage is a legal requirement to have health coverage to make good healthcare more affordable. The PPACA required MEC for individuals starting in January 2014. Without this coverage, individuals were required to make a payment when filing their income taxes. In 2018, the laws changed so they didn’t need to pay a shared responsibility payment when lacking MEC. While most states don’t require individuals to pay, federal mandates still require some employers to offer MEC.
MEC is sometimes called qualifying health coverage, and several types of plans fit the requirements, including:
- Marketplace plans
- Employer-sponsored plans
- Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP)
The requirements for MEC include:
- Fair insurance premiums.
- No discrimination based on health status.
- No exclusions for preexisting conditions.
- Access to appeals for coverage decisions.
- No lifetime or annual coverage limits.
- A yearly printed summary of health benefits.
Overall, the MEC requirements provide access to necessary medical services and protect individuals from out-of-pocket expenses.
Are employers required to offer MEC to employees?
The employer’s shared responsibility under the ACA requires that all applicable large employers (ALEs) offer MEC to at least 95% of their employees. ALEs have at least 50 full-time or full-time equivalent (FTE) employees for the previous calendar year.
A full-time employee is one who averages at least 30 hours of service per week or 130 hours per month. FTE employees refer to a combination of employees. They aren’t full-time employees but together amount to full-time hours. Here’s how to discover the number of FTEs you have:
- Add the service hours for all non-full-time employees for the month, not including more than 120 hours of service per employee.
- Divide the total by 120.
- Round down to the nearest whole number.
The result gives you the number of FTE employees. If this amount plus the number of full-time employees is over 50, you must offer MEC.
Any employers that don’t qualify as ALEs won’t face penalties for not offering MEC, but it’s still in your best interest to provide insurance. Many potential employees place a high value on insurance benefits and choose jobs with better benefits over those with better salaries. Health insurance also encourages a workplace culture that prioritizes health and well-being.
When do businesses incur Affordable Care Act (ACA) penalties?
The two reasons that ALEs incur ACA penalties are:
- No coverage: Employers that don’t offer coverage or offer it to less than 95% of their full-time employees and dependents, resulting in at least one full-time employee receiving a premium tax credit to pay for coverage through the Health Insurance Marketplace
- Insufficient coverage: Employers offer coverage to at least 95% of their full-time employees. However, at least one employee receives a premium tax credit to buy insurance through the Health Insurance Marketplace. This situation may happen because they received no coverage or the coverage didn’t meet the minimum value standard.
The minimum value standard says that a plan must:
- Pay at least 60% of the total cost of medical services for a standard population.
- Include substantial coverage of provider and inpatient hospital services.
How much do ACA penalties cost?
Employer shared responsibility provisions require ALEs to meet the MEC requirements or pay an employer shared responsibility payment to the IRS.
Employers that don’t offer MEC must pay $2,880, the equivalent of the premium tax credit their employees receive annually. The amount is indexed for future years to account for inflation. Employers pay $2,880 for each full-time employee, with the first 30 employees excluded from the calculation.
Employers that offer MEC but have at least one employee seek a tax credit will also pay a shared responsibility payment of $4,320 annually for each employee who seeks a tax credit. Employers pay this amount monthly, so they only pay on the months that employees receive tax credits.
Contact us about our myMEC plans for employers
When you seek a MEC plan provider, give your employees healthcare they can depend on while keeping your costs manageable with a MyMEC health plan from MagnaCare. Get in touch with us to learn more about your options. Our MyMEC specialists will be happy to answer all your questions and help you determine the right plan for your needs.
