At the heart of the House health care bill that passed Sunday is not cost control but subsidized coverage, says Renee Baker, Louisiana state director for the National Federation of Independent Business. And what could have satisfied more stakeholders would have been addressing runaway premium increases rather than creating insurance mandates, says Butch Passman, president and CEO of the Louisiana Business Group on Health.
Baker says her group, which represents about 5,500 state businesses averaging five to eight employees, is mostly upset with two major provisions in the bill that will add costs to smaller companies, on top of various new taxes. The two sticking points are a paperwork requirement that means companies must report any purchase over $600 to the IRS; and a mandate that requires construction firms with five or more employees, or $250,000 in payroll, to provide coverage, even though the bill provides a health insurance exemption to firms with fewer than 50 employees. Baker says the mandate came out of labor unions’ support for health care reform on the condition that the plan require smaller, non-union contractors to shoulder the extra overhead of health insurance.
Passman says his group, which represents about 185 employers averaging 200 or more workers, fears that insurance companies facing a “double-barrel shotgun” in 2014 to take all comers regardless of preexisting conditions or previous investment in the health insurance system will pass on costs to consumers. “You’ve got to have an effective way of making sure everybody pays,” Passman says. Read the full story here. —Todd R. Brown
