Healthcare on the Hill – What's Needed for Chemical Distributors

For a long time, healthcare has been and continues to be an issue that has real and lasting implications for Americans across the country. While many smart people are working around the clock to come up with a solution that works for all Americans, finding that solution isn’t easy. Given the persistent quagmire in Washington these days, I believe it’s time we forge our own path to solve the healthcare problem facing our industry.

In the preliminary results I’ve seen from our 2017 Membership and Safety Survey, more than 31% of our members said that expensing health care benefits is there number one tax challenge that Congress and the White House need to address. With insurers dropping out of the Affordable Care Act quicker than you can blink an eye (Aetna just pulled out of its final two states - Delaware and Nebraska), it’s clear to me that the current system is not working.

Unfortunately, movement on the legislative front has been slow. The American Health Care Act of 2017 (H.R. 1628) was approved by the House on May 4th by the slimmest of margins, 217-213.This passage comes in the wake of the House leadership not being able to secure enough votes in support of the original health care reform bill that was considered earlier this spring. On top of that, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office just yesterday released its analysis of H.R. 1628 and determined that while it would save $119 billion over the next decade, it would also result in 23 million fewer people being insured by 2026. Whether these predictions are accurate or not, the report certainly makes the effort to repeal and replace Obamacare more difficult politically.

So I’m not heading to Vegas anytime soon to place a bet on when a bill approved by both the House and Senate can reach the President’s desk. Considering that healthcare reform is stacked up with other important efforts like tax reform, the 2018 appropriations and budget process, regulatory reform and infrastructure development, there is a lot of political maneuvering that the House and Senate leadership needs to figure out before anything clears Congress and makes it to President Trump for his signature.

This cloudy picture is why NACD has asked our members to support Association Health Plan (AHP) legislation. I believe AHPs are one of the best ways for chemical distributors to increase their insurance market leverage and band together to provide their employees with better, more affordable health insurance coverage.

For NACD members, the benefits of AHPs are quite clear. They would:

• Enable small businesses to pool together across state lines through their membership in a trade or professional association to purchase health coverage for their employees and their families;
• Be treated as if they were large group single employer health plans; and
• Increase the bargaining power of small businesses with health insurance providers, ensuring a level playing field for smaller entities that want to help their workers and their families with their health care needs.

The House approved legislation (H.R. 1101) earlier this spring that addresses these ideas. Now it is time for the Senate to do the same so that businesses across the country can have better tools at their disposal to provide healthcare options that work for their employees.