LEGISLATION ISSUESWed, Jun 10After meeting with Senate Democrats to discuss health care reform options at the White House earlier this week, President Obama sent a letter June 3 to Sens. Max Baucus (D-MT) and Edward Kennedy (D-MA) signaling his support for a public health insurance option and his openness to an individual mandate, provided Congress builds in a hardship waiver for Americans who can’t afford coverage. Obama also said employers have a responsibility to support health insurance for their employees, but that any employer mandate should exempt small businesses which “face a number of special challenges in affording health benefits.” Baucus and Kennedy are the chief architects of health care reform in the Senate, with their respective committees – Senate Finance and Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions – aiming to mark up a bill later this month. Staffs for the two committees have pledged to reconcile the two plans and get a bill considered on the Senate floor before the August recess. In addition to defining the bill’s key provisions, the issue of how to pay for health care reform is under heavy debate, with Obama this week standing by his proposal to set aside $635 billion in a health reserve fund as a down-payment on reform. The reserve fund includes a proposal to limit the tax deduction for charitable contributions to 28 percent for families earning more than $250,000. The administration has estimated the proposal could raise about $326 billion over 10 years. Obama said he is committed to working with Congress to fully offset the cost of health care reform by reducing Medicare and Medicaid spending by another $200 to $300 billion over the next 10 years, and by enacting other appropriate revenue-raisers. Baucus has been cool to the administration’s funding options, preferring to pay for reform by finding money within the health care system. A Finance Committee aide told BNA this week that Baucus won’t consider eliminating the tax exclusion for employer-provided health coverage, although he may be open to proposals to cap the exclusion. House leaders spent part of this week talking about the timing of climate change legislation and whether health care reform should come first, but remain committed to putting a bill on the president’s desk by Oct. 1. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charlie Rangel (D-NY) said this week that most of the financing options for health care reform are still on the table, including the charitable deduction cap. “Some people say you can forget about capping the [deduction for] contributions that people make to charities … or that it would be ridiculous to consider excluding the credit that we give to employers for health insurance, but it doesn’t matter because everything is on the table and you do what you have to do for your country to raise the money,” Rangel told BNA. The House Small Business Committee also held a hearing on health care reform this week, looking specifically at how an employer mandate and other proposals would impact small businesses. Small Business Committee Chair Nydia Velazquez (D-NY) pointed out that insurance premiums for small businesses continue to climb at a rate that many employers cannot absorb. Many of the witnesses asked to testify at the hearing voiced support for the Small Business CHOICE Act, introduced by Velazquez earlier this year to reduce healthcare expenses by creating pooling and reinsurance mechanisms for small businesses. ASAE has endorsed this proposal as a means of making healthcare more affordable for associations and other small businesses. |
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