CARMINE GALASSO/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Henry Passapera, co-owner of P&R Trading Inc. in East Rutherford, said health coverage for his 12 workers rose only slightly.

Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, employers in New Jersey and nationwide will soon have new decisions to make about their workers' health coverage. Starting Saturday, small employers will get a chance to buy coverage online through a federal marketplace, and starting Jan. 1, large employers will face penalties if they don't offer affordable coverage.

These changes may not have a huge effect on New Jersey's health insurance landscape, however, because most large employers already offer coverage, and small employers may find better options outside the federal exchange. But there are still questions about the Affordable Care Act's long-term effects on employers' health-care costs, which for years have been among their most significant expenses.

"It's too early to tell what the full impact will be on pricing," said Linda Schwimmer, vice president of the New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute, an organization that works on issues of safety, quality and cost-containment. "There are still a lot of problems with our health care system that the ACA is prompting us to try to work on." She said that as cost-cutting measures work their way into the health system, employers may find their costs easing.

Health coverage costs have been rising at a slower pace in the past few years compared with the late 1990s and early 2000s though it's not clear if the Affordable Care Act is part of the reason. The Kaiser Family Foundation recently said that the cost of employer-sponsored health coverage rose 3 percent this year, compared with last year. But deductibles have been rising at a faster clip, meaning that employees pay more of the cost when they get sick.

A recent survey by the New Jersey Business and Industry Association found that the increases in employer health-coverage costs this year varied by the company's size. A total of 583 of the association's member businesses responded and the survey found that the largest employers in the state those with more than 250 employees reported an increase of 7.3 percent this year, compared with a whopping 24 percent for businesses with two dozen or fewer workers.

At P&R Trading in East Rutherford, premiums rose slightly when the company, which buys and sells aircraft parts, renewed its coverage in the spring. The company has about a dozen workers.

"My rates didn't go up very much, so we're OK," said co-owner Henry Passapera. "We hope it will continue that way."

One of the company's workers, in his 30s, isn't on the company plan because he found it cheaper to find his coverage on the individual insurance marketplace set up through the Affordable Care Act. P&R subsidizes the cost of his premium, which is around $300 a month.

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New rules for health care, same uncertainty on costs