|
As Congress heads toward its August recess, President
Obama's health care reform initiative has clearly hit a rough patch.
The reasons include major policy differences over the shape of reform
and how to pay for it, especially among key Democratic leaders,
and a growing public concern over the scope of any government health
plan and how it would affect the quality and availability of health
care services in the U.S.
No one is predicting that the president won't achieve
his goal of enacting major health care reform this year. Indeed,
major stakeholders, including hospitals, drug companies, physicians,
insurance companies, and large business groups, continue to take
part in discussions even while stepping up their criticism of various
aspects of the health care reform proposals that have been made
public. Most analysts believe that significant reform is still possible
but say that reconciling the widely divergent policy views will
be very hard.
A key issue for employers is whether the legislation
will include an employer mandate—which is considered likely—and,
if so, how will it be structured.
Two employer mandate proposals have been publicly
disclosed so far. A draft bill in the U.S. House of Representatives
would impose an 8% payroll tax on employers that don't provide health
insurance coverage to their employees—an extraordinary burden that
the business community adamantly opposes.
A bill proposed by the Senate Committee on Health,
Education, Labor, and Pensions contains a less costly mandate. However,
that bill doesn't take into account businesses that employ temporary,
part-time, and seasonal employees, who may only work for short periods
of time during a year and whose work hours often fluctuate.
The HELP Committee bill would require employers that
don't provide health insurance to their employees to pay an annual
fee to the government of $750 for each full-time employee and $375
for each part-time employee. Full-time is defined as 35 hours per
week. The bill currently provides that payments can be prorated,
but only on a monthly basis—so, for example, a staffing firm could
be charged $62.50 (one-twelfth of $750) for an employee who works
just one week, or even one day, during the year.
http://www.healthreform.gov/
|
