Health in the House
The free ride may be over for businesses whose employees have access to a company health insurance plan — but who see a much better deal in signing up for free insurance from the government. Like it or not (and employers don’t) House leaders and the Baker administration have now agreed on the need to fix something that Obamacare broke.
Prior to 2013, individuals who had access to employerbased health insurance in Massachusetts weren’t eligible for Medicaid (known here as MassHealth). But new Obamacare rules allowed them to qualify based on income.
The result — hundreds of thousands who have jobs, but are now enrolled in MassHealth. Gov. Charlie Baker in his budget plan called for employers who cover fewer than 80 percent of their workers to pay a $2,000-per-employee assessment to offset the additional burden on taxpayers.
The House, in its budget plan released yesterday, endorsed the same concept — although it kicked the specific details back to Baker, calling for input from the business community before settling on a final amount.
One thing that especially galls House Speaker Robert DeLeo, he said, is the emergence of companies that specialize in helping businesses shed workers from employer-sponsored health plans. “We obviously can’t continue to go down that path,” DeLeo said.
Baker is seeking a federal waiver that would allow Massachusetts to go back to the old “gated” system. But relying on the Trump administration and a Congress at war over health care is not a smart short-term strategy. So the only question seems to be which businesses will have to pay this new assessment — and how much.
Dempsey floated the idea of exceptions for smaller businesses, or employees who decline the employer plan in favor of a spouse’s plan — and any final agreement should indeed acknowledge the very real concerns of responsible employers about Baker’s plan.
Beyond health care, DeLeo remained true to his taxpayer-friendly reputation in the $40.3 billion House budget, by avoiding new broad-based taxes or tax increases (not even Baker’s proposed tax on AirBnb rentals — yet). The House is also doing its part to reduce the use of onetime revenue ($110 million this year, down from $1.2 billion just three years ago), and to build up reserves. There will be a few distasteful details tucked into the budget plan; there always are. But the House at least gets the big picture right.