If the small employer doesn’t have access to the early renewal strategy, then they must face higher premium costs immediately. To offset these higher costs, at least in part, small employers are doing what they have always done––increasing deductibles and co-pays to try to keep the premiums close to what they were. This is also what the employers who used the early renewal strategy will have to consider come the end of 2014.

Will the small employer, faced with these increases, abandon their health plans and send their workers to the exchanges?

First, since so many have gotten that early renewal one-year stay of execution, we really won’t know that for a while.

Second, the number of small employers offering health benefits was already on a years long steady and this certainly can’t help.

But with all of that said, the simplistic, “Small employers are better off dropping coverage and sending them to the exchange,” is just too simplistic.

It’s a lot more complicated than that.