If you or your organization has a keen interest in health care reform, a key Senate committee has opened a short window of opportunity for you to have your say. The Senate Finance Committee released a report on Monday, May 18, outlining possible approaches to financing comprehensive health care reform. The full document is available at http://finance.senate.gov, where you can follow the link at “Latest News.”
Options include (1) realizing savings from the health system, (2) altering current tax treatments for various health-related expenses, and (3) promoting healthy lifestyles by, for example, raising taxes on beverages sweetened with sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, and other sweeteners — but not on artificially sweetened beverages.
The taxation options are perhaps of greatest interest to employers. One much-discussed possibility is to limit the current tax-free status of employer-provided health coverage. Other choices include limiting the tax advantages of health savings accounts, modifying or eliminating flexible spending accounts, crafting a standard definition of qualified medical expenses, modifying the itemized deduction from income taxes for medical expenses, reducing or eliminating the special tax deduction and/or unearned premium exclusion for Blue Cross/Blue Shield and similar organizations, modifying the FICA tax exemption for students, extending the Medicare payroll tax to all state and local government employees, and modifying certain rules affecting nonprofit hospitals.
There’s a very limited period for public comment to the committee. Public comments should be directed to Health_Reform@finance-dem.senate.gov. The deadline for public comments on the financing policy options is Tuesday, May 26, 2009.
Check out the new free HR Hero White Paper, Health Care Outlook for Employers to get the big picture on the relevant laws and legislation affecting your health-benefit policies and a look at several of the different approaches being promoted in Congress.
——————————–
Keep up with the latest changes in benefits and compensation law and how it affects employers with the Benefits and Compensation Law Alert and Benefits and Compensation Law for Non-Profits.