several kinds of employee health insurance plans were now, officially, considered to be below standard. Some large corporations, like McDonald's, had been offering some of their employees a mini-med health insurance plan. At least some of these corporations decided that upgrading their current health plan to meet the new requirements was going to be too expensive. Instead, they were threatening to simply stop offering their employees any health insurance, whatsoever.
The result would be that a lot of Americans who were getting at least some health insurance coverage would suddenly have no health insurance at all. This group of people did not make enough income to be able to afford private, individual, health insurance. To prevent a situation where a lot of Americans suddenly would be without health insurance coverage, the federal government granted waivers to some of the large corporations who were making these threats. The waivers would allow the company to continue to offer it's employees substandard health insurance, for a limited time.
the federal government has granted 1,372 waivers to employers and to health plans in all 50 states. This covers less than 2% of the insurance market (to give you some perspective). The waivers protect more than 3.1 million Americans that would have lost their health insurance when the large corporations were planning on dropping their employee health plans.
The waivers are temporary. They will no longer be available in 2014, when two things are expected to happen. The health insurance exchanges are intended to be up and running in 2014. This will give Americans a way to locate a health insurance plan that they can afford. The other thing that will happen in 2014 is that the annual dollar limit, or cap, that insurance companies currently place on health care, will be banned.
The Truth About Insurance Waivers - Insurance - Families.com