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The Daily Tar Heel

UNC system faces additional costs from the Affordable Care Act

Beginning in January 2015, the UNC system will have to provide insurance coverage for the 8,600 employees who work 30 hours a week, but are not currently covered by the state insurance plan, said Marty Kotis, a member of the Board of Governors.

Those employees include graduate teaching assistants, student employees, postdoctoral employees, temporary or visiting faculty and library and administrative staff.

But the $47 million cost is a maximum amount calculated using the $5,452 price of insuring an employee, said Charlie Perusse, chief operating officer for the system. The actual cost will likely be much lower.

“There’s a lot we don’t know. Number one, the feds are still adjusting guidelines and parameters. We could have some sets or subsets of employees that would be exempted from coverage,” he said.

Kotis said the system’s General Administration has considered different options to combat the high cost, including shifting costs from other areas, seeking less expensive health coverage plans, cutting employee hours and increasing revenue to the system — which could include tuition increases.

Perusse said the campuses could manage employee costs more efficiently to reduce the total number of employees who need to be insured.

“Do you need someone always at 30 hours a week, or could they be a little less and still provide the same service?” he said.

But Kotis said cutting employee hours would come at a high cost to the community and the UNC system.

“In Chapel Hill, if everyone has to reduce their employees’ hours to 30 hours or less, you’ve got people who were working 40 hours a week, and suddenly they have to have a second job,” he said.

He said if those employees got a second job, they would still work full-time hours every week, but lack benefits from either employer, forcing them to buy their own insurance under the Affordable Care Act.

There has not yet been an official decision regarding the cost by UNC-CH or the General Administration.

“At this point, most of the work regarding the Affordable Care Act’s provisions has been focused on the entire UNC system. It is too early right now to address how the ACA will affect UNC-Chapel Hill specifically,” said Kathy Bryant, spokeswoman for UNC-CH’s Office of Human Resources.

The General Administration should receive the final guidelines from the federal government this summer, and then officials will be able to develop guidelines to send to campuses by Sept. 1, Perusse said.

state@dailytarheel.com

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