I don’t think any casual observer would mistake NRF for being a big fan of the new health care law, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, or PPACA. Yes, we are hard at work, trying to help make the best out of this bad law through the regulatory process. Our first priority is to our retail and restaurant members who will have to live with the new law – positive and negative parts, alike. It doesn’t mean that we have to support the bad parts, though.
One of our biggest objections to PPACA is that it not only failed to make serious progress in reducing the present and future cost of medical care and coverage but that it also imposed job-killing mandates on employers and individuals. We will never miss a chance to try to eliminate the employer and individual mandates before they become effective in 2014. With surgical precision, we can carefully excise out these dangerous and unnecessary provisions before they can destroy jobs and increase costs. Our scalpel is freshly sharpened and stands ready and steady…
NRF strongly supports S. 3501, the American Job Protection Act, and S. 3502, the American Liberty Restoration Act, introduced by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT). Hatch is a longtime leader on health care issues and continues to play a strong role on both the Senate Finance and HELP Committees. Come join us in supporting the Hatch bills – the right approach to begin healing our wounded health care system.
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How do you address the concern that, without a mandate, healthy employees will opt to go without health insurance until they become sick, thereby raising the cost for employees who do buy insurance, as well as the employers who subsidize their insurance? Isn’t the mandate also a way to ensure that some employers do not gain an unfair cost advantage by choosing not to subsidize their employees’ health insurance? It seems to me that the mandate is not a bad thing for all employers, and that the NRF should not be supporting some members at the expense of others.
Employers – particularly industries like retail with thin profit margins – are very susceptible to higher labor costs. The mandate in the health reform law hits employers who do not provide coverage or do not provide coverage that measures up to the new federal standards. Who will help those who lose their job as a consequence of the employer mandate? It seems to us – particularly in this time of weak economy and already high unemployment – that Washington should not make things any worse.
The individual mandate is a closer question. NRF’s own platform for reform (NRF Vision for Health Care Reform) urged policymakers to consider including an individual mandate. We parted company on this question because the law does not do enough to reduce the cost of medical care and health insurance coverage in the short and longer term. Individuals can be deterred from gaming the system (waiting until they are ill to obtain coverage) by strictly controlled enrollment periods and penalties for failure to obtain coverage at point of medical care.
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[...] mean for them. Some are still in denial, hoping the healthcare bill can still be given a “mandate-ectomy,” or that their industry will be [...]
[...] mean for them. Some are still in denial, hoping the healthcare bill can still be given a “mandate-ectomy,” or that their industry will be [...]
[...] mean for them. Some are still in denial, hoping the healthcare bill can still be given a “mandate-ectomy,” or that their industry will be [...]