Wednesday, June 24, 2009 6:10 PM

Lobbyists Find Much To Dislike In Health Bills

As I wrote in the June 13 issue of National Journal, everyone in Washington has been expecting that after months of harmony between Congress and the White House, interest groups working on health care reform were soon going to begin acting like interest groups and stake out their opposition to measures as they began moving on Capitol Hill. (See our magazine story here, subscription-only)

Clearly this was the week interest groups began shifting from harmony to discord. In testimony before the House Ways and Means Committee on Wednesday, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce condemned aspects of the House Democratic health care proposal. The group is strongly opposed to a provision that would pay for the plan through an employer mandate.

"Congress is divorced from reality on this issue," said Randal Johnson, senior vice president at the Chamber testified, according to CongressDaily. (See subscription-only story here.)

The National Federation of Independent Business also sent out a press release calling the House health care bill "bad" for small business. "As the U.S. House official begins to discuss and develop its approach to addressing the health care crisis, one thing is clear - small business owners need meaningful reform. Sadly, many of the provisions in this draft bill fall far short of achieving those goals," said Brad Close, vice president of public policy for the NFIB.

Officials for both AHIP and NFIB stressed however that they still want to work with Congress on finding agreement.

"Is the 'kumbaya' moment over? Honestly, I don't know," said NFIB spokeswoman Stephanie Cathcart. "What I do know is that we are in the early innings of what will be a very long ball game. From what we've seen so far, small business (sadly) is down in the [score], but we are working to make a late inning push and ensure that we help our nation's job creators."

Added AHIP spokesman Robert Zirkelbach: "The point needs to be made that there is still a great deal of consensus on a broad framework for comprehenisve health care reform. Unfortunately, the discussion around a government-run plan has clouded all of the areas where there is consensus."

On Tuesday, America's Health Insurance Plans and the Blue Cross & Blue Shield Association wrote a joint letter to the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee expressing "strong concern" about committee plans to add a public plan option to the legislation as well as other measures. Click below for letter.

Meanwhile, some progressive groups are also critical of key provisions being considered by two Senate committees. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has issued a policy brief charging that the way the committees' requirement on employers to "play or pay"--that is, to provide health insurance or help defray employee's costs for buying their own coverage--would have "serious unintended consequences" for low income, minority workers and workers with disabilities.

See the full study here.

Because the subsidy requirements only apply to low-income or Medicaid eligible workers, the Center says, employers who don't provide health insurance would have a financial incentive to avoid hiring such people. They might tilt towards low-wage workers who can rely on income or health coverage from other family members, or towards replacing them, where possible, with machines. The Center does argue that such problems could be avoided if employer "pay" requirements were instead based on a percentage of their payroll.