 |
 |
Federal Healthcare Legislation Update:President Obama has signed into law two pieces of legislation that make up our new healthcare system; the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act. In order to help our members understand this new legislation, TNLA has created a webpage that can be used as a source of reference. This compilation includes an online article, a time line from a policy newsletter, two nationwide association’s breakdowns, a national news outlet, the National Journal and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's white paper on the health care legislation. These sources seem to be balanced in their reporting on what impact the Healthcare legislation may have on individuals and businesses. TNLA will continue to monitor the implementation of this legislation and give periodic updates when creditable information is available.
Click on the source to view their perspective summary:
The American Society of Association Executives (ASAE)
American Nursery & Landscape Association
This article is provided by your state association and ANLA as a Lighthouse Program partner benefit. On March 21, 2010, the House of Representatives passed two bills that would reform health coverage in the United States. The first bill, H.R. 3590, the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" (PPACA) represented final passage of the Senate-passed version of health coverage reform. The House also passed, H.R. 4872, the "Health Care and Education Affordability Reconciliation Act" (HCEARA) that contains the changes that the Obama administration made to the Senate-passed version of health legislation. The Senate will still have to consider and pass the HCEARA into law for the Administration's changes to be incorporated into health reform. President Obama signed the PPACA into law today to ensure that provisions tied to the date of enactment can become effective sooner rather than later. The administration remains hopeful that the Senate will consider the HCEARA bill under reconciliation rules that would allow for a simple majority for passage, rather than the 60 vote margin needed for most bills. In both H.R. 3590 and H.R. 4872, there are several issues of interest to the nursery & landscape industry. Though there is no explicit language regarding employer mandates for health coverage, there are penalties and fines for not providing health coverage for employees that could be considered a "soft" mandate. As previously reported, the Senate-passed version of health reform had exclusions for small business employers, defining a small business has having 50 or fewer full-time employees. There was also a seasonal exemption included, which would allow for seasonal businesses to exceed the 50 employee limit for 120 days without triggering the coverage requirements. The HCEARA, commonly referred to as the "reconciliation" bill, would make a couple of changes to the PPACA if passed and enacted. The reconciliation bill would increase the applicable payment amount for firms with more than 50 "full time equivalent" (30 hours or more) workers that do not offer coverage, to $2,000 per full-time employee, up from $750 in PPACA. HCEARA would also allow employers with 50 or more FTE workers to subtract the first 30 full time employees from the payment calculation. For example, a firm with 51 workers that does not offer coverage will pay an amount equal to 51 minus 30, or 21 times the applicable per employee payment amount. There was also some concern throughout the industry on provisions in the Senate-passed version that held construction occupations to lower employee thresholds than other small businesses. Those provisions have been dropped from the legislation. In order to pay for this overhaul of the health reform system, there would be a number of new taxes were included in the legislation. The PPACA increases the Medicare Hospital Insurance (HI) trust portion of the payroll tax for the employee's share only. However, the HI applies only to earned income, so the HCEARA would create a new "Unearned Income Medicare Contribution" (UIMC) tax. This would be calculated separately from the HI tax and would apply to "net investment income." The rate for that tax will be 3.8%. Finally, and perhaps most importantly to small businesses, the requirement for all vendors to file Form 1099 for all transactions was included in the PPACA and would not be altered in the HCEARA. ANLA will continue to monitor developments related to federal health reform as the Senate begins consideration of HCEARA, and as PPACA is implemented into law. |
