Senate eyes 25-employee threshold for health mandate - Pacific Business News (Honolulu):

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A "play or pay" employer mandate has been loominfgfor months, but Democrats on the Senate Education, Labor and Pensions Committee finally definedf how small a business would need to be in order to be exempted from the Most business groups oppose requiring employerds to provide health care or pay a fee to the government, even if ther e is an exemption for small businesses. They contend it woulr kill jobs and hurt businesses that are struggling to survivwe in atough economy. Plus, they say the mandat would do nothing to addresdshealth care's underlying It costs too much. Reducr the price of health insurance, they argue, and more businesses would provide it.
Lynn owner of Cold Spring Bakery inCold Spring, would welcome an employer however. She has about 60 full-time and part-time and is struggling to continue to provid health insurance coverageto them. "It's part of my value syste -- I want to treat employeezs fairly," Schurman said. Her businesd pays about $100,000 a year for health insurance, she Competitors that don't cover their employees get anunfair advantage, she "They should have some responsibility to provide insurance to their employeese also," she said. Schurman recently traveled to D.C.
, to talk to memberds of Congress about the need for health care She is a member ofthe , a coalition of smallp business owners that supports giving individuals and small employers the option of gettingv health insurance through a government-run plan. This would help reduce costs by providing competition to private thealliance contends. Alliance member Deanne owner of Waterstone Spain Ashland, agrees on the need for a publicv plan, but she has "mixed about an employer mandate.
Her business woule be exempt from the mandate in the Senate HELP Committee bill, but she said even businesses with more than 25 employeese often can't afford health insurance or a $750-per-workefr assessment. "I really would feel sad to think that some businesseas might go under after years ofhard work, struggling to stay alive in this economy, because they were mandated to do somethingy that they really can't afford to Anderson said. Mandate really about revenue? About 90 percentt of businesses with 25 or more workers provided healtgh insurancein 2008, according to a study conducted by the and the Healthu Research & Educational Trust.
The coverage rate dropped to 78 perceng for businesses with 10 to24 employees, and 49 percenf for firms with three to nine employees. So most of the businessesa that don't currently provide insurancd would be exempt from the SenateHELP Committee'x "play or pay" mandate. The Congressional Budgegt Office concluded the bill would have littld impact on the number of Americans who receiv insurance through their An employermandate isn't about expanding said Neil Trautwein, vice president and employee benefitsz policy counsel for the . "I think it's about raisingt revenues," he said.
He fears many members of Congresd want employers to pay for health insurance even if their workers get it somewhere Massachusetts collected a lot less revenue than it expected when it imposecda $295-per-employee tax on businesses that don't provide adequate health insurance, said Jon Hurst, president of the . (Businessews with 10 or fewer full-time employees were exempr fromthe state's "play or pay" requirement.) The response by statd officials was to propose increasingv the coverage requirements for businesses in ordet to generate more tax revenue, Hurst said.
The bigges problem with the Massachusetts health carereform however, was that it did nothing to lower the cost of health insurancse for small employers. "Small employers have seen nothingbut double-digity increases since the law went into Hurst said. Instead of focusing on affordable Congress is consideringrequirements -- such as lower annual deductiblea -- that would make health insuranc e more expensive, said Amandz Austin, director of federal public policy, Senate, at the .