Who Is Required To Provide Health Insurance Under Obamacare? 
Technically no person or employer is required to provide health insurance under ObamaCare . In other words it is not a criminal offense you could be jailed for . ObamaCare uses a mixture of tax penalties , tax credits and subsidies to strongly motivate individuals and employers to provide health insurance either for themselves or , if you are an employer , for your employees . Small businesses with 2 to 49 employees are subject to no tax penalties for not providing health insurance for their employees . Depending upon the average income level of their workforce there is even a tax credit available to incentivize small employers to provide health insurance . In practical terms only a small percentage of small businesses have taken advantage of this credit . However , small businesses are also the first businesses to have theirhealth insuranceplans directly impacted by the requirements of ObamaCare for what is deemed an acceptable benefit plan design -LRB- deductible levels , services covered , removal of pre-existing condition exclusions , etc. -RRB- and this is leading to substantial rate increases for many small businesses or deterring somesmall businesses who were considering beginning to offer health insurance to their employees from doing so . Beginning in 2015 employers with 100 + full time employees will be subject to a tax penalty of $ 2000 per employee if they offer no health insurance to their employees or a tax penalty of $ 3000 per employee who enrolls in the government marketplace and receives a tax subsidy due to the employer 's coverage being deemed unaffordable by the law 's standards . While these tax penalties appearmeaningful at first glance , they are really substantially less than it costs most large employers to provide health insurance currently to their employees . As such , it is debatable as to how much of an incentive the law will really be for large employers who do not currently provide health insurance to their employees to do so in the future and perversely it will be cheaper for most large employers to pay the tax penalty than to pay for health insurance for their employees . In 2016 the penalties and requirements I described above will be applied to employers in the 50 to 99 employee group size segment . 