Companies Could Face Health Insurance Requirements

Legislators in over thirty states have proposed some form of what supporters in New Hampshire call the Fair Share Healthcare bill.

Earlier this month Maryland was the first to pass a similar measure—and it did so with flair.

Lawmakers swept past an attempted filibuster to override the governor’s veto and require all businesses with over ten thousand employees to pay eight percent of payroll on healthcare.

Walmart is the only business in the state big enough to be affected.

The lobbying force behind these bills is an arm of the Service Employees International Union called Americans for Healthcare.

John Thyng is the state director for New Hampshire.

Thyng: I think working families and even small businesses around the state have been paying their fair share. And it’s time for those couple of companies that have been shifting those costs to step up to the plate.

When Thyng talks about cost shifting he means the healthcare costs of people who do not have insurance get paid by those who do.

It can happen in a number of ways.

If someone without insurance goes to the hospital and can’t afford it, hospitals absorb the cost or pass it on to patients with insurance.

Or, people turn to tax payer dollars by going on Medicaid, the state and federal insurance program for people with low incomes.

Representative Marcia Moody, a democrat from Newmarket and prime sponsor of the bill, says Medicaid can not shoulder any more cost shifting.

Moody: Our Medicaid costs here are tremendous and the federal government has just cut ten billion from a lot of these programs that are intended to help some of the people who are struggling and have no health insurance.

Moody’s bill requires companies with more than fifteen hundred employees to either pay eight percent of their payroll on health insurance, or contribute the difference to the state’s Medicaid program.

She estimates very few companies in New Hampshire don’t already pay at least eight percent on healthcare.

Moody: And this has been a tradition in the United States and here in New Hampshire in particular most of the people in New Hampshire depend on employer-based health insurance and most of the companies here in New Hampshire are very good about supplying a health insurance program for their employees.

But the bill’s supporters fear that under pressure of rising health care costs, employers are restricting or eliminating benefits.

According to the New Hampshire Center for Public Policy Studies, over sixty two percent of full time workers get health insurance through their employer.

And according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, that number has dropped point three percent over the last five years.

Curtis Barry represents the Retail Merchants Association in New Hampshire, which includes Walmart, Sears, and Home Depot—three companies that meet the size criterion of the bill.

He says this bill will not reduce healthcare costs, it just juggles who is going to pay them.

And, he adds, companies know how much they can spend on benefits, and if they must spend more on health insurance, they will make cuts elsewhere.

Barry: They may cut retirement benefits, they may cut part time jobs in lieu of full time jobs, which reduces their total number of employees.

Dave Juvet from the New Hampshire Business and Industry Association opposes the bill because it changes the definition of employer-based insurance from a benefit to a mandate.

Juvet: I think it makes it more difficult and more expensive to do businesses in the state of New Hampshire. It sends a terrible message to businesses maybe thinking of locating to New Hampshire.

It is unclear how many businesses in New Hampshire would be affected by this bill.

Twenty five meet the size requirement of having over fifteen hundred employees, but it is likely that most of them already spend over the bill’s threshold.

Curtis Barry’s fear is that over time those thresholds might change.

Barry: At some point when the state decides it needs more money or wishes to pass along costs further onto business that it will just take the threshold as proposed in the bill which is 1500 employees and keep lowering it as they need more money. The legislature has a track record of doing that.

But first the bill will need to pass.

A House Commerce subcommittee meets this week to work on amendments.

SOQ