Sunday, May 19, 2013
Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine has joined two other Republican senators in introducing legislation this week seeking to repeal a key element of President Obama’s health care overhaul.
The Jobs and Premium Protection Act goes after a tax levied on health insurance plans, which proponents say health plans can afford and which helps pay for expanded insurance coverage. The other two senators who authored the bill, Republicans Orrin Hatch of Utah and John Barrasso of Wyoming wrote a column for Politico this week charging that the tax’s costs will be shifted to employers and policy holders, particularly small businesses.
“The insurance tax alone could impose $87 billion in costs on businesses and their employees in the first 10 years — diverting revenue that could be used for higher wages, new hires and capital investment,” they wrote.
In joining on to the bill when it was introduced Wednesday, Snowe said that, “This tax could increase the cost of health insurance by 15 percent for small businesses, and kill hundreds of thousands of jobs.”
Snowe was the only Republican on the Senate Finance Committee to vote in favor of the health care bill when it was approved by that committee in October 2009, though she said then that she did so to move the process forward and said she had concerns about the bill and might change her mind on the issue.
Snowe then voted against the bill on the Senate floor in December 2010.
Snowe favors repealing the entire bill, not just the health insurance component, but says more "workable reforms” must be passed benefits now offered by the health care law maintained, including the ban on excluding people from health coverage based on preexisting conditions and allowing children to stay on their parents’ plans until age 26.
The liberal blog Think Progress, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund, said it is hypocritical of the Republicans to complain about policies that help pay for federal initiatives instead of using deficit spending.
“Of course, the appropriate response isn’t to roll back the taxes — which are necessary to finance reform and ensure that coverage expansion is fully paid for — but to strengthen provisions that help lower costs and mitigate the cost-shift,” says Think Progress. “The ACA (Affordable Care Act) already requires insurers to spend 80 to 85 percent of their premium dollars on health care rather than administrative expenses and forces companies to justify proposed premium increases.”
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Kevin Miller is Washington bureau chief for the Portland Press Herald and MaineToday Media. He has worked as a journalist in Maine for 6 ½ years, covering the environment, politics and the State House. Before arriving in Maine, he wrote about politics, government and education for newspapers in Virginia and Maryland.
Kevin can be reached at 317-6256 or kmiller@mainetoday.com
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