H.Republicans on Wednesday passed a bill aimed at making it easier for small businesses to pay for health care for their employees.
The Custom Health Option and Individual Care Expenses Arrangement Act (CHOICE Arrangement Act) codifies a medical reimbursement arrangement established by the Trump administration in 2019 that allows employers to reimburse employees for personal health insurance plans. As well as providing tax-advantaged funding for medical insurance. Authorized medical expenses. This is intended to provide an alternative to employer-provided medical insurance, which is tax-advantaged under current law.
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“Washington should not prevent workers from getting the best medical coverage for themselves and their families. is to do.” Said House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (Republican, Missouri).
“This bill gives small businesses an opportunity to reduce the administrative burden of managing traditional insurance coverage if they so desire. and make that insurance portable,” said Smith.
But Democrats said the bill was in line with their party line and would undermine Obamacare by reinstating Trump-era rules. Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Tex.) said, “It’s all Trump, Trump, Trump,” and said Obamacare was “death by 1,000 job cuts.”
The bill also includes provisions drafted by Rep. Claudia Tenney (Republican, New York) that explicitly requires the Treasury to: Inform Companies that have various tax incentives and programs that make it financially viable to provide medical benefits to their employees.
“Small employers want to provide these benefits to their employees not only to retain them, but to ensure a high quality of life,” said Tenney, who runs a small printing company in upstate New York. I’m thinking,” he said. “The time has come to raise awareness of these programs and address any obstacles to their success and effective implementation.”
HR 3799 is part of a larger medical package that protects self-insured, stop-loss insurance and association health insurance plans.
Rep. Robert Scott (D., Virginia) denounced the bill in the House plenary session as “a repeated futile attempt to circumvent the Affordable Care Act.”
Scott and Doggett raise concerns that HR 3799 will allow employers to discriminate against employees with pre-existing medical conditions, so consumers need to be protected from employer coercion into “junk” plans bottom.
Virginia Fox, Chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee said “This bill does not transform healthcare into the Old West, as some lawmakers have claimed.
“Certainly everyone had health insurance.” [under Obamacare]”But not everyone had medical care,” said Rep. Tim Wahlberg (R-Michigan), who drafted the health association plan protection portion of the bill. Wahlberg went on to point to rising health insurance premiums and the cost of healthcare products and services.
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SMEs consistently report According to the National Federation of Independent Businesses, the cost of providing health insurance to employees has been a top concern for 40 years.
According to the NFIB, only 39% of companies with one to nine employees offer health insurance, compared with 89% of companies with 30 or more employees. Among these SMEs, 94% said that offering employer-sponsored health insurance as part of their benefits is somewhat difficult.
