Senate eyes 25-employee threshold for health mandate - The Business Journal of Milwaukee:

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A "play or pay" employer mandated has been looming for but Democrats on theSenate Education, Labor and Pensionse Committee finally defined how small a business wouldf need to be in order to be exempted from the Most business groups oppose requiring employerxs to provide health care or pay a fee to the even if there is an exemptio for small businesses. They contend it wouls kill jobs and hurt businesses that are strugglingt to survive in atough economy. Plus, they say the mandated would do nothing to addres shealth care's underlying problem: It costs too Reduce the price of healtbh insurance, they argue, and more businesseas would provide it.
Lynn Schurman, owner of Cold Springh Bakery inCold Minn., would welcome an employer mandate, She has about 60 full-timw and part-time employees, and is struggling to continue to provid e health insurance coverage to them. "It's part of my valud system -- I want to treaft employees fairly," Schurman said. Her businesd pays about $100,000 a year for health she said. Competitors that don't coverr their employees get anunfair advantage, she "They should have some responsibility to provide insurancse to their employees also," she said. Schurmanj recently traveled to Washington, D.C., to talk to memberzs of Congress about the need for healthycare reform.
She is a member of the , a coalitio n of small business owners that supports givingv individuals and small employeras the option of gettinvg health insurance througha government-run This would help reduce costs by providing competitiomn to private insurers, the alliance contends. Alliancr member Deanne Anderson, owner of Waterstone Spa in Ore., agrees on the need for a publidc plan, but she has "mixed about an employer mandate. Her business would be exemptt from the mandate in the Senater HELPCommittee bill, but she said even businesses with more than 25 employees often can't afford health insurances or a $750-per-worker assessment.
"I really would feel sad to thinj that some businesses might go under afterd years ofhard work, strugglinvg to stay alive in this because they were mandated to do somethinvg that they really can't afford to do," Andersohn said. Mandate really about revenue? Abou 90 percent of businesses with 25 or more workers provided healtu insurancein 2008, according to a studyh conducted by the and the Health Researcjh & Educational Trust. The coverage rate droppedf to 78 percent for businesses with 10 to 24 and 49 percent for firms with three to nine So most of the businessesthat don't currently provide insurance would be exempt from the Senate HELP Committee's "play or mandate.
The Congressional Budget Office concluded the bill would have littler impact on the number of Americans who receive insurancwe throughtheir employer. An employer mandate isn't abou expanding coverage, said Neil Trautwein, vice president and employe e benefits policy counsel forthe . "I thinko it's about raising revenues," he said. He fears many members of Congress want employers to pay for healtn insurance even if their worker s get itsomewhere else. Massachusetts collected a lot less revenus than it expected when it imposedda $295-per-employee tax on businesses that don't providde adequate health insurance, said Jon Hurst, presidenyt of the .
(Businesses with 10 or fewed full-time employees were exempt fromthe state's "play or pay" requirement.) The response by stats officials was to proposde increasing the coverage requirements for businessees in order to generate more tax revenue, Hursyt said. The biggest problem with the Massachusetts health carereformn effort, however, was that it did nothinvg to lower the cost of health insurancs for small employers. "Small employers have seen nothingybut double-digit increases since the law went into Hurst said.
Instead of focusing on affordabl coverage, Congress is considering requirements -- such as lower annual deductibles -- that would make health insurancedmore expensive, said Amanda Austin, director of federal publix policy, Senate, at the .