Chamber Member Testifies on Health Care Incentives as Stimulus

Chamber member Ray Pinard urges Congress to incentivize small business owners to offer health care benefits during a November 13 House subcommittee hearing.

A second economic stimulus package should include health care tax incentives for small businesses to cover more employees instead of providing increased federal funding to states for Medicaid, U.S. Chamber of Commerce member and small business owner Raymond Pinard told members of Congress last week.

“I understand that Congress is again facing very difficult decisions on what items to include in a possible second stimulus package in order to revive our sluggish economy,” Pinard said during the November 13 hearing of the health subcommittee of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. “I am here to tell you today that the best way to protect health care benefits and reduce health care costs incurred by states is to provide incentives for the private sector to create jobs.” More jobs would reduce the number of uninsured seeking Medicaid and would provide the states with more tax revenue, according to Pinard. 

Pinard, president and CEO of Boston-based 48HourPrint.com, called for other measures to stimulate more small business health care participation, such as reducing insurance mandates and allowing for association health plans across state borders, creating a national market for health insurance, providing tax credits to small businesses to help them provide insurance, and allowing individuals and the self-employed to deduct health insurance premiums.

Subcommittee on Health Chairman John Dingell (D-MI) called the hearing to discuss the need for a second stimulus package that could include funding for infrastructure, unemployment insurance, and health care benefits. “Healthcare spending, in the form of increased funding for Medicaid to the states, must be a critical component of any stimulus package,” Dingell said in a statement. “There is a great deal at stake if we do not provide states with the resources to continue providing healthcare coverage to people in this time of need.”

Gov. Janet Napolitano (D-AZ), Gene Sperling from the Center for American Progress Action Fund, and Alan Viard of the American Enterprise Institute also testified at the hearing.

Read Pinard’s testimony.

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