WASHINGTON — The Republican tax reform package repeals the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate requiring Americans to pay a penalty for not having health insurance and the GOP hopes to roll back the law’s employer mandate in 2018.
“It is something that we’ve advocated yes ways to what vehicle that is you know 2018 will determine, but certainly, we push for repeal of the employer mandate too,” Marc Short, White House Director of Legislative Affairs told The Daily Caller early Tuesday night.
According to the IRS, the ACA dictates that companies with 50 or more full-time equivalent employees must provide health insurance to all of their full-time staffers or anyone who works hours equivalent to full-time.
“Take it to 500. The number we like is 500. We are at least saying we want to talk to the Democrats about some things that we agree on. The Democrats don’t like the medical device tax any more than Republicans,” New York Republican Rep. Chris Collins told TheDC Tuesday.
Alabama Republican Rep. Gary Palmer told TheDC that companies will cap their full-time employees just below the 50 person mark 30th hour mark just to avoid the dealing with the ACA regulation. .
“We call those companies 49ers. They wouldn’t get to 50. And then, we had a lot of companies that had employees who were 29ers. They were not allowed 30th hour and become eligible for benefits,” Palmer said Monday. “What we’ve wound up with a situation where small business quit hiring or they quit expanding and you had people who previously had full-time jobs making a decent wage with some benefits that’s having to work two-part time jobs just to get 40 hours a week with no benefits.”
Collins agreed saying, “The 50 number was an arbitrary number. And I think we had it at a hundred for a while, but 500 is the right [number]. If there’s going to be a number it’s 500. It’s not 50 or 100…we would love to work with Democrats to make some other changes– get rid of the medical device tax changing the employer mandate count to 500. I don’t know that they’re open for it.”
One House GOP source told TheDC Republicans could very well tackle the employer mandate issue in the 2019 budget reconciliation process
In the meantime, California Republican Rep Devin Nunes and Pennsylvania Republican Rep. Mike Kelly introduced a bill last week that would give a temporary moratorium on the employer mandate until Jan. 1, 2019. In addition, the bill would suspend for one year to December 2020 implementation of the excise tax on pricey employer-sponsored health coverage.
Other legislation aimed at delaying or gutting provisions of the Affordable Care Act were introduced last Tuesday as well, including bills that delay the implantation of the medical device tax and the health insurance tax for health insurance plans regulated in Puerto Rico.
(CORRECTION: An earlier version of this piece showed Marc Lotter spoke to TheDC. Lotter did not talk to TheDC about the Employer Mandate)