The National Federation of Independent Business is
urging all small business owners to contact their elected officials requesting
they vote to freeze unemployment insurance (UI) rates.
Legislators need to vote now to prevent a costly and unnecessary 33% automatic
UI tax rate increase (that took effect on January 1) which will cost MA employers
nearly $500 million. Massachusetts’ UI costs are already amount the highest in
the country. And the state’s UI trust fund has a more than sufficient balance
to pay benefits to all unemployed workers without a tax increase.
Actually both houses approved the rate freeze
earlier this year, but in separate bills. The House of Representatives voted in
favor of a UI rate freeze on February 12 as part of a supplemental budget. The Senate
passed a similar rate freeze on February 6 as part of a comprehensive UI
package. The House and Senate are now arguing over which vehicle to use to
freeze UI rates while the state’s small business owners risk paying a
significant price associated as a result of a delay.
NFIB has advocated strongly for broader UI reforms but legislators must act now
to simply freeze 2014 rates and prevent half a billion dollars from being
needlessly removed from the economy.
We urge you to contact your elected officials and tell them to pass an
unemployment insurance rate freeze today before bills start hitting mail boxes
of small business owners later in March.
NFIB Opposes New Health Care Mandates
Despite Obamacare’s limits on expansion of
“essential benefits”, legislative proposals to add to the state’s list of
health care mandates continue to be filed. NFIB testified before the Joint
Committee on Financial Services about the high cost of health care in MA –
perhaps the highest in the world — and the need to focus on public policies to
lower those costs, not increase them in a state that already has high costs for
employers in the areas of energy, development, taxes, unemployment insurance,
and employee salaries and benefits.
While the new federal health care law will actually
increase costs for many small businesses and add more complicated regulations
and costly mandates, the health care mandate proposals would further drive up
the costs of health insurance for every small business owner and for every
person who works in a small business.
The high costs for business owners are reflected in
our state’s continuing frustratingly slow job growth over the past decade or
more, particularly in the small business sector which has traditionally been
the state’s job incubator, and in our state’s recently rising unemployment
rate. Small business owners are not a bottomless pit. Now is not the time to impose a new mandate
of higher health care costs on employers and on employees – a mandate that will
make the state less economically competitive and take more money out of the
paychecks of working consumers.
More than a year ago, several business groups warned
the Governor and legislative leaders about the costs of new mandates under the
Affordable Care Act. “Beginning in
calendar 2014, the ACA will assess states for costs associated with any new and
recent mandated health benefit laws. While the ACA permits states to mandate
benefits for qualified plans, it requires the state to assume the cost of any
additional services by defraying the cost of those benefits. As a result, if
the state passes a law to require coverage of a certain benefit and the benefit
is neither considered by the federal government to be an “essential health
benefit” (EHB) nor included with the state’s benchmark plan for qualified
health plans (QHPs), the state will be responsible for paying for such claims
under private plans in the Connector.” All state-required benefits, like
those in the various well-intentioned bills that are the subject of the
hearing, are not included in the state’s benchmark plan and would not be
considered EHB for 2014 or 2015. The fiscal impact on the state’s budget of any
additional mandates passed during this session is significant. The fiscal
impact on Massachusetts small businesses is also significant.
At the minimum, new mandate bills should be reviewed
by the administration to determine the actual cost. The costs, whatever the
determination, associated with these expanded health care mandate proposals
will disproportionately affect small businesses. These proposals will not apply
to large companies, which typically “self-insure” and are governed by the
Federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA). And the share of costs
paid by small businesses and the 1.5 million workers employed in small
businesses in Massachusetts will grow even larger as bigger businesses choose
self-insurance.
Because of the disparate impact of health care
mandates on smaller businesses and because of the budgetary implications caused
by additional health care mandates under federal health care law, the health
care mandate proposals should be set aside.
