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The "drop coverage" option seems to me unacceptable for 2 reasons: first, the employer has to pay a $2,000 annual fine (or what they call a "tax," I suppose) for each employee dropped from insurance, which is just another method of collection, as far as the govt. is concerned. So you're still paying. (2) You're dumping your employees into the public plans, so you're putting them right smack in the same situation of having to pay for policies which are contrary to conscience.

Seems to me that there's an Option 6 and Option 7, too. Will somebody who knows more than I do, please let me know if this is accurate and practical or not?

Option 6: reorganize your corporation into several separate smaller corporations of under 50 employees each, so you're not obligated to provide an insurance plan for them (e.g. your corporation which has 180 employees is reorganized into 4 corporations with 45 employees each.)
Couldn't you just do this "on paper" without actually changing your operations? Like the Planned Parenthood Federation of America is a "federation" of separately incorporated units?
Option 7: then, so the employees don't get stuck in a public plan, couldn't they sign up for a medical sharing ministry? I think there are three of them in the United States--- Medi-Share, Christian Healthcare Ministries, and Samaritan Ministries International--- which are grandfathered in and exempted under law.

Would this work? I'm totally ignorant on the technicalities. Anybody know about this?

Option 6: reorganize your corporation into several separate smaller corporations of under 50 employees each, so you're not obligated to provide an insurance plan for them (e.g. your corporation which has 180 employees is reorganized into 4 corporations with 45 employees each.) Couldn't you just do this "on paper" without actually changing your operations? Like the Planned Parenthood Federation of America is a "federation" of separately incorporated units? . . . Would this work? I'm totally ignorant on the technicalities. Anybody know about this?

It would, unfortunately, not work. The IRS has a great deal of experience with this, with almost no limits on their power, and they often redefine fake or even real structures intended to avoid taxes or penalties. In this case, they would define the operation as a single business. I've been under their microscope, several times, and I would not take that risk.

Breaking your business into smaller corporations works if and only if you can break the organization along functional boundaries and then meet all the IRS tests for closely-held corporations to exist as corporations and not as a tax dodge. Because, you see, there’s also a benefit for small corporations in that their first $X of income is taxed at lower rates. I’ve seen farmers very cleverly set up separate corporations (all S-corps), one of which will own the land and rents it out to the farming organization, one is the farming company and it owns the equipment and does the farming, another is the marketing company that buys/sells/hedges the outputs of the farm.

The farmer is actually employed by the farming company, even tho he (and his family) own the land-owning company in toto.

The IRS loves to come after these types of structures unless you have assiduously clean books, that all transactions happen at reasonably market-informed values (eg, you can’t rent your land out of the land rental company to the farming company at $10/acre/year - it has to be a real lease at realistic, reasonable rents for the locale), and the salaries paid to the officers and employees of all these corporations must be reasonable and market-based.

The amount of paperwork to pull this off is tremendous. Instead of filing two tax returns (eg, one for a LLC or S-corp that does everything, and then your own personal 1040), you now have to file one return for every corporation, you have to file your own 1040, and you must maintain books for every organization individually, with individual bank accounts and no co-mingling of cash, incomes/debts/costs or assets. Everything has to have a real boundary to it.

I’ve looked into this in the past, and ended up not going this route for our farm in the last because the amount of paperwork would keep me tied up for at least two months every year.

“Option 7: then, so the employees don’t get stuck in a public plan, couldn’t they sign up for a medical sharing ministry? I think there are three of them in the United States-— Medi-Share, Christian Healthcare Ministries, and Samaritan Ministries International-— which are grandfathered in and exempted under law.”

If your grandfathering works the same as in South Africa, it would apply only to existing members and would allow for no change in benefits. New members would not be admitted under the “grandfather” terms, and existing members would not be allowed plan changes, assuming that the option exists.