Every so often we get a question about the Automatic Enrollment box on the Health Insurance Plan setup. What does that do?
The answer has been nothing; it is there for future support of automatic enrollment features pending the Department of Labor issuing regulations. Originally, employers with more than 200 full time employees were required to automatically enroll employees in coverage.
The last information we found from the Department of Labor was this technical release back in 2012.
Like many elements of the ACA, it took the government a lot longer to implement this provision than expected. After recently checking on the status of this provision, we were surprised to find that it has been quietly repealed. See the links below for more information.
Health Care Reform: Automatic Enrollment: Is automatic enrollment required under the PPACA?
Health Plan Auto-Enrollment Won’t Be Required but Still Allowed
We will likely remove the Automatic Enrollment checkbox from the medical plan setup (just so we don’t get questions about it). If any features are added in the future to support automatic enrollment based on requests from customers, we will add it back in. For now employers do not need to be concerned about meeting any requirements for automatically enrolling employees in coverage.
Update 12/14/15 3:56: Fixed first link.