After weeks of negotiating, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) finally unveiled a highly anticipated health care reform bill Wednesday night called the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The 2,074-page bill is a combination of two different health care reform bills approved by Senate committees earlier this year. Reid revealed the Senate bill less than two weeks after the U.S. House of Representatives passed its own version of health care reform legislation by a slim 220-215 margin.
The bill would create insurance exchanges to allow consumers to shop for and compare insurance plans. Although the bill would establish a government-run public option, unlike the House bill, the Senate legislation would allow states to opt out of it. Similar to the House legislation, the Senate bill would also expand Medicaid, offer subsidies to lower-income individuals, and prohibit insurance companies from denying coverage to individuals based on their preexisting conditions. The Senate bill also contains an individual mandate that would require most individuals to obtain insurance or pay a fine.
Impact of Senate Health Care Reform on Employers
Unlike the House bill, the Senate’s proposal doesn’t require employers to provide health insurance to employees. However, if an employer with at least 50 full-time employees has even one employee that receives a federal subsidy to buy health insurance through the new exchanges, the employer would have to pay a $750 fine for each of its full-time employees.
The legislation would create a tax on employer-sponsored high-end “Cadillac” insurance plans. The tax would be 40% of the “excess benefit” of plans that exceed the thresholds of $8,500 for individual coverage and $23,000 for family coverage.
Among many other things, the Senate legislation would also:
- offer tax credits to certain small businesses to help with the cost of purchasing health care insurance for their employees;
- require employers with more than 200 full-time employees that offer health benefit plans to automatically enroll new full-time employees in one of the plans they offer;
- increase the additional tax on distributions from health savings accounts and Archer medical savings accounts that aren’t used for qualified medical expenses; and
- allow unmarried young adults up to age 26 to stay on their parents’ health insurance.
What’s Next
The Senate will next have to hold a procedural vote to begin debate on the bill, which could reportedly take place as soon as Saturday. Senate Democrats need 60 votes to begin debate on the bill, and since every Senate Republican is expected to vote against allowing the legislation to proceed, all 58 Democrats and the two Independents must vote in favor of moving the legislation forward. If the Democrats can get 60 votes and move the bill to the Senate floor, many commentators predict that it will be a long December of heated debate. Republicans have vowed to fight the bill every step of the way, and Senator Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) recently stated, “It’s going to be a holy war.”
If the Senate passes a health care reform bill, it would have to be reconciled with the House legislation. If an identical bill were approved in both chambers, it would go to the president to be signed into law.
Keep up with the latest legal changes affecting employer benefits and trends in employee benefits with the Benefits Complete Compliance and with changes in federal employment laws in the Federal Employment Law Insider.
So much for getting an education and working hard. While I understand that many people don’t have health care, I also understand that there are many people who do as little as they can and are satisfied to squeak by with just enough money to buy beer and cigarettes. Many of those same people are already getting public assistance for health care. Just go to any emergency room and you will see. I see generations of greater welfare dependency by virture of the fact that American citizens will wake up to the fact that in a nanny state, you don’t have to work to get taken care of.
Response to Gin- I guess it makes us feel better to allow our fellow citizens to go without health care coverage to blame them. There are many hard working average American citizens that don’t have health coverage because they can’t afford it, or becasue they have a pre-existing condition and have been turned down for coverage. I have a friend who has a prexisting condition, has worked for the same employer for 6 years that doesn’t offer health insurance, she attempted to purchase a private plan and they wanted to charge her $700 a month premium. I find it appalling that someone has to chose between buying health insurance or keeping a roof over their head. That is not the America I love.
Gin,
I agree completely. I could not have said it any better!
Reality is the America you love Sandra is over 12 TRILLION dollars in debt. Each person in the US would have to pay over $39,000 each to cover that debt. We cannot keep spending money we do not have. To do so and think it will all just work itself out is denial in its truest form, and setting us on a course for certain collapse as a nation. It can happen here. America is not immune to the laws of economics, nor are we “too big to fail.”
So…it’s a problem to increase the national debt to provide people with health care…was it also a problem to increase the national debt (to the tune of $1 trillion dollars…see http://costofwar.com/) for 2 wars, at least one of which was based on completely bogus information and lies? Or how about adding $4 trillion to the debt to extend the Bush tax cats? (See http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=1018). Where were all the “tea parties” in 2001 when George W. signed those bills? Gimme a break.
For the past 40 years both parties have failed the American people. Bit by bit, socialism has crept into the laws and undermined individual rights and resultant responsibilities. The current crop of politicians pander to the masses and lobbyists in order to keep themselves in power. Capitalism is the only way to provide health care for everyone, not socialism. The current mishmash of socialist health care laws stifle innovation, underpay for care, steal health providers’ time, are grossly inefficient, etc. In a capitalist system there would be competition for business that would lead to innovative and individually designed plans. Charity would take care of the truly destitute (as opposed to the truly lazy).
The huge national debt, waste in government, and ridiculous entitlement programs sap the spending power of every citizen. Such outrageous behavior must be stopped or in the end we will become a bankrupt third world debtor nation. We are well on our way even now.
It’s not about capitalism or socialism it is about corporations paying for the government we get. We need a universal health care system, that controls costs, eliminates wasteful administration due to excessive paperwork from millions of different insurance policies. We could have this system through the private insurers, we just mandate a universal insurance policy that cannot be altered. We need caps on pharma-300% profit on human suffering is grotesque. We need to focus on America. We need to step down our military and bring the money home to aid all Americans and not just the corporations.
For those of you worried about the cost of health care for everyone, I have a solution. Add another tax bracket. When Ronald Reagan was president the top tax bracket was 50%. Let’s add a 50% bracket for those making over $500,000 a year.