An approach that requires all employers to provide health care benefits to their workers or pay a fee (see employer pay-or-play) that contributes to the cost of covering them. The ACA creates a type of employer mandate, in that employers with 100 or more employees who didn’t offer coverage as of January 1, 2015 and employers with 50 or more employees who didn’t offer coverage as of January 1, 2016 had to begin paying a fee per full-time employee. There are two types of penalties, one for an employer failing to offer coverage and another for an employer failing to offer a health plan with a specified minimum value.