A Voice for Employers: Talking Healthcare Reform with US Lawmakers

Despite last week’s cold snap, the bloom of cherry blossoms along Washington DC’s Tidal Basin is now under way – a peaceful sight that belies this stormy moment in Congress, where new healthcare legislation is being debated and the headlines seem to shift from moment to moment. However, one thing is for sure: any legislation affecting the US healthcare system must consider the impact on employer-sponsored health insurance – the source of coverage for 177 million Americans, 16 times the number enrolled in public exchanges.

That’s why the leadership of MMC companies Mercer and Oliver Wyman created a health policy group to help formulate MMC’s views on ACA repeal-and-replace legislation. Our efforts led to the issue of a policy paper that showcased original Mercer research on changing the tax treatment of employer-sponsored coverage.  

Last month, we took this research to the US House of Representatives to meet with policymakers actively working on the newly proposed American Health Care Act, or AHCA. We demonstrated that the excise tax on high-cost plans, currently law under the ACA, is not an effective method of penalizing rich “Cadillac” plans because plan design is only one factor affecting plan cost and often less important than location and employee demographics. 

This would also be true of a cap on the employee individual tax exclusion for employer-provided health benefits, a provision included in an early draft of the AHCA and favored by powerful voices such as House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), House Ways and Means Chair Kevin Brady (R-TX) and new HHS head Tom Price. Mercer had also modeled the impact such a cap would have on the effective tax rates of Americans based on their income. The hardest hit, by far, would be lower-paid workers with families. Some staffers faced with this information for the first time were visibly struck.

When the bill was released for mark-up, the cap on the exclusion was not included, and the Cadillac tax was delayed until 2025 (and possibly 2026). But while we were pleased with this outcome, we also knew the bill was a long way from becoming law and the cap could easily resurface.  

It was my privilege to meet last week with Senators Rob Portman (R-OH) and Tom Carper (D-DE), both members of the Finance Committee; Senator John Cornyn (R-TX), Majority Whip and Member of the Finance Committee; and Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Chairman of the Finance Committee. I urged them, first and foremost, to preserve the health benefit tax exclusion, and secondly, to liberalize HSA rules. I also discussed the potential impact of proposed cuts to the Medicaid program, and our concern that a surge in uncompensated care would cause providers to shift cost to private group plans – making it harder for employers to continue to provide adequate coverage to their workers.

Our work is far from done. I look forward to returning to Washington as the legislative debate continues – to advance the goal of preserving and enhancing the employer-sponsored healthcare system that is a stable source of good health coverage for approximately half of all Americans. Let’s continue the conversation here about how changes in healthcare policy will have an impact on your organizations and people.

Julio A. Portalatin