U.S. Chamber Analysis: House Health Care Bill Would Hurt Employers

 
The House health care bill contains dozens of new rules on employer-sponsored health plans, according to a new Chamber analysis of the legislation.

"The proposed bill would launch more than a trillion dollars in new spending and create a massive new bureaucracy," says Randy Johnson, senior vice president of the Chamber's Labor, Immigration, and Employee Benefits division. "While much has been written about pending legislation in the House of Representatives, we believe that this analysis is one of the few that really digs down into many unexplored issues that will greatly affect the employer community."
 
"A Primer on Employer and Employee Issues in the House Health Care Reform Legislation" by Nandan Kenkeremath, president of Leading Edge Policy and Strategy LLC, examines the consequences of enacting H.R. 3200, America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, including policy and budgetary concerns that the Chamber says have been overlooked in the debate.

According to the analysis, the bill would:

• Increase the federal debt and deficits;
• Force changes to current employer plans, even if employees like the plans;
• Unfairly deny individual affordability credits to low- and moderate-income workers whose employers provide health insurance;
• Reduce spending under Medicare but not direct those savings to address the problem of unfunded obligations under Medicare;
• Fail to reduce the rise in national health care costs.
   

The full analysis is available here.