Archery Business: Jul/Aug 2010
July/August 2010 archeryBUSINESS 15 ing to a situation where one personthe secretary of Health and Human Services will be the regulator of all health insurance in America. Starting in 2014, one person will de\037ne what your company's insurance must be and what you must buy or offer your employees. If your company has 50 or fewer em-ployees, the mandates don't apply to you. Once you have 51 or more employees, the employer mandates kick in. The mandates say if you do not buy the insurance the secretary of Health and Human Services requires you to buy, or you don't offer your employees the federal-government-required insurance the secretary speci\037es, you must pay a \037ne of $3,000 per em- ployee. If you choose to dump your em-ployees into the government-run (insur -ance) exchange, then you only have to pay a $2,000-per-employee \037ne. So as soon as you go from 50 to 51 employees, that's $100,000 right there per year. For individuals, if you don't receive ac-ceptable insurance from your employer, you have to buy it yourself from the gov-ernment-run exchange. And if you don't buy the insurance, you'll pay a \037ne that's enforced by the IRS. That \037ne will be on a sliding scale of $600 to about $2,500. For most people, the insurance you have to buy will be more expensive, but it will be based upon age and health status. That's how it will be determined because, when you're doing regulations called "guaran-teed issue and community rating," you can't charge a sick person any more than you would charge a healthy person. Nor can you charge an older person much more than a younger person. So, rates will go up for most people. That will help people who are sick and older, but at the expense of everybody else. There's a better way of \037xing that, which is why I prefer high-risk pool programs. I'm not arguing against the need to \037nd solutions for people with pre-existing con-ditions. I just don't like the way in which they do it with this law. They make every-body else pick up the tab through their health-insurance premiums.ATA: For companies with more than 50 employ-ees, are there fears that management will cut employees before the 2014 changes take ef-fect?CONGRESSMAN R Y AN: Yes. We hear that, but there's a formula designed to catch that. The formula includes part-time workers in its calculation, so you can't just beef up on short-term, part-timers and think you can escape the law because you have fewer full-time employees. I don't have the formula here in front of me. It's not on a 1-for-1 basis, but it's close to that.ATA: The new law will provide companies with 25 or fewer employees tax credits they can apply toward health-insurance purchases. What impact does this have on small business?CONGRESSMAN R Y AN: That tax credit is for very small businesses, and it helps those businesses offer health insurance through the government exchange for their em-ployees. Those tax credits phase out as the business grows and gets larger. It's basically for the business that pays lower wages. It's a very small tax credit for very small busi-nesses. The Congressional Budget Of\037ce does not think it will apply to many small businesses. ATA: For those companies with 25 or fewer em-ployees, the law says tax credits will be awarded if they meet "certain wage requirements." What determines those wage requirements?CONGRESSMAN R Y AN: Those kinds of spe-ci\037cs will be determined by in\036ation, by the CPI (Consumer Price Index). That's my belief.ATA: Many people are asking if it's possible to repeal this law. Do you favor its repeal?CONGRESSMAN R Y AN: De\037nitely. We want to repeal this law and replace it with real reform that works. We want a law that maintains the doctor-patient relation-ship and gets market competition into the healthcare sector. You must remem-ber that healthcare programs are what are causing our nation's big debt increases. We must solve our \037scal crisis and pay down our debt. But as it stands under this law, the only way to get healthcare costs down and prevent a debt crisis from hitting our country is for the government to deeply and systematically ration healthcare. That is something that's done in Canada and many European countries, but it's not something that I believe Americans will stand for. That is why we think this law will not stand and cannot stand. Fiscally, it's a house of cards and it's going to lead to an explosion of debt. And morally, I don't think people are prepared to have the gov-ernment systematically ration their health-care and intervene in the decision-making between themselves and their physician. But that's what will be required under this law to make the numbers work. There are four agencies created in this law that are designed to lead us toward government-style rationing of healthcare. No. 1, I just don't think that's something we would accept in America. But, No. 2, our numbers are so bad in the unfunded liabilities of the federal government, and the debt that's coming before us, that to contain costs and bring down debt, there would have to be a severe rationing sys-tem. That's why I just don't think it's going to stand. But we also know repealing it would take till 2013 with a new president and a new Congress. My hope is that we'll make an effective case for that. Our goal won't be to go back to the old healthcare system, which everybody ac-knowledges was broken. We want to re- place it with a new system. When I talk to the folks in my district, I point them to my website and the Patients Choice Act (www.house.gov/ryan/PCA/), which ex-plains the kind of things we're proposing to replace it with.ATA: Some proponents of the law say it would enable companies with up to 100 employees to pool together to increase their buying power for insurance coverage. In theory, this would lower premium costs. But will companies be able to pool their resources across state lines?CONGRESSMAN R Y AN: No, it won't work like that. It doesn't include the traditional idea like I have in my bill, which allows interstate shopping. First of all, the feder -al government de\037nes what kind of insur -ance you must have, and you must buy it in the government exchange. Now, states can create multi-state exchanges if they want, but they won't have different kinds of insurance products available. There are three \036avors of federally de\037ned insur -ancebronze, silver and goldwhich are just varying levels of co-pays and deduct-ibles. But the federal law will de\037ne what kind of insurance you must have, and the states will set up the exchanges where you must go to buy these federally mandated and designed insurance. So, the notion of interstate shopping presumes you'll have different kinds of in- surance coverage competing with one an-other for your business. But that doesn't work in the kind of system now in place. This new system is de\037ned by the feder -al government. It doesn't mean you can go buy something in Iowa or Wisconsin that's going to differ from each other. It doesn't work like that. Prior to the most recent presidential election, US News and World Report wrote that Ryan "is a bowhunter and belongs to his hometown's archery association, the Janesville Bowmen." 014-015_AB10JULata_update.indd 15 6/8/10 10:09:44 AM
You must have JavaScript enabled to view digital editions.
