What Employers Are Required To Provide Health Insurance? 
No American employer is required to provide health insurance to their employees . What the Affordable Care Act -LRB- ObamaCare -RRB- imposes is an employer mandate that employers of certain sizes must offer their employees health insurance that meets certain minimum essential benefit coverage requirements and an affordability level to the employee . If such an employer chooses not to offer group health insurance to their employees the employer will be subject to an employer mandate tax penalty charged on a per employee basis . In 2015 employers with 100 + employees will be subject to this requirement with the size threshold dropping to 50 + employees in 2016 . Employers with less than 50 employees are not required to offer coverage . While on the face of it the employer mandate would seem to be an incentive for larger employers to offer health insurance to their employees it 's true effects are yet to be seen and are quite debatable . For example , the cost of the tax penalty is generally far less than the cost of insuring an employee thus perhaps creating an incentive to take the lower cost of the tax penalty and to send your employees to the health insurance marketplaces to buy their own coverage . 