Congressional hearings are not always civilized affairs. However that was not the case last Wednesday, when I appeared before the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee to discuss progress and problems with Affordable Care Act (ACA) implementation. The partisanship that typically grips other congressional hearings was mercifully absent, and in its place, true, bipartisan concern [...]
NRF will be represented by a jeweler from Maryland when the House Small Business Committee holds a hearing next week on a provision under the health care reform law that has created a burdensome new tax reporting requirement for retailers and other businesses. Seth Shipley, owner of Shipley’s Fine Jewelry in Hampstead, Md., is scheduled [...]
U.S. District Court Judge Henry E. Hudson of the Eastern District of Virginia ruled today in the Cuccinelli case that section 1501, or individual mandate section, contained within the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, “exceeds the constitutional boundaries of congressional power.” The full opinion has been made available online. Judge Hudson rejected [...]
The Senate Commerce, Science & Transportation Committee will hold a hearing this Wednesday on limited benefit coverage, sometimes also known as “mini-med” coverage. These benefits – most often seen in industries with low profit margins and with lower income workers – have been in the news lately because of certain problems created by the new [...]
Let’s face it: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) of 2010 is a pretty complicated legal beast. Not only will it take a swarm of bureaucrats, a sea of regulations and at least eight years (until 2018) to fully implement, many key provisions – like the employer mandate penalties – aren’t effective until [...]
We NRFer’s were quite passionate in our opposition to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) during Congressional debate. According to most observers, we were second to none in our opposition throughout, based primarily on the punitive employer mandates and fundamental lack of meaningful reductions in the cost of medical care. In fact, the [...]