The principles here detail the path to affordability, flexibility, and predictability. 

AFFORDABILITY

• Reconsider mandates that drive up the cost of health insurance and inhibit job creation.
  • Repeal or increase the employee threshold of the job-killing employer health insurance mandate.
  • Evaluate benefit mandates and health insurance requirements with a focus on affordability.
• Equalize the tax treatment of health insurance for small business owners and self-employed individuals.
  • Allow self-employed individuals and business owners the same tax treatment as business owners and employees who receive group health insurance through their employers.
• Support the ability of small businesses to provide health insurance coverage to their employees.
  • Codify the ability of small businesses of all sizes to help employees who purchase insurance on their own, without contribution caps.
  • Reform the Small Business Health Care Tax Credit to make it available for a broad range of health insurance options.

• Eliminate unnecessary compliance burdens.
  • Eliminate outdated paperwork burdens and prevent new paperwork requirements.

FLEXIBILITY

• Increase health insurance options for small businesses.
  • Enhance the ability of small businesses to help employees purchase health insurance on their own.
  • Allow small businesses to access similar health insurance opportunities as large businesses.
• Permit innovative pooling arrangements.
  • Protect and expand the ability of individuals and employers to band together to form larger, more stable risk pools with greater negotiating power.
• Improve Americans’ ability to save and pay for healthcare with tax-favored health accounts such as Health Savings Accounts, Flexible Spending Accounts, Health Reimbursement Arrangements, or similar tools that allow pre-tax dollars to be used for healthcare.
  • Eliminate unnecessary restrictions on tax-favored health accounts.
  • Enhance tax-favored health accounts to make them more accessible and useful to employees and business owners.

PREDICTABILITY

• Allow individuals and businesses to keep the health insurance they currently enjoy.
  • Protect the employer-sponsored health insurance model and protect the ability of business owners and employees to purchase individual coverage insurance against attempts to impose a single payer healthcare system.
• Prevent the disruption of markets where individuals and small business owners purchase health insurance.
  • Build a stronger market that services both business owners and employees who purchase health insurance on their own.
  • Ensure government-subsidized insurance options do not result in adverse selection or further destabilize the small group and individual health insurance market.