Millions of Americans anticipate buying health insurance for the first time through new public exchanges to avoid penalties for not having insurance under health care reform's "individual mandate" that takes effect in January. At the same time, some employers are already scaling back their group health plans to avoid a 40 percent excise tax on high-cost, or "Cadillac," plans that doesn't take effect until 2018.
The tax will hit individual plans costing more than $10,200 and family coverage costing more than $27,500 annually. A Washington, D.C.-based think tank has criticized the tax as "not well-targeted" because it's likely to impact many unsuspecting workers with rather ordinary health plans that happen to cost a lot because of company size, job location and other factors.