Wall Street Journal (12/08/14) Vipal Monga

Chief financial officers at U.S. companies expect the federal Affordable Care Act to boost health care costs in 2015, and most plan to pass that along to their employees. Bank of America Merrill Lynch polled more than 600 CFOs and other finance executives at companies with annual revenues between $25 million and $2 billion. Of those, 69% said they expected their labor costs to increase an average 7.1% to cover the costs of the ACA. Over 75.0% of the CFOs said they would pass those costs along to their employees. To compensate, nearly 66% said they would reduce spending in other parts of the business.