Congress comes to Concord for health care hearing

Congress comes to Concord for health care hearing

Chuck Horne, president of Hornwood Inc., a family-owned textile manufacturing company in Lilesville testified at the hearing.
Starting in 2014, President Obama’s health care law will require businesses with 50 or more full-time employees to provide government-approved insurance or face a tax penalty. The law defines a full-time employee as an individual working 30 or more hours in a work week.CONCORD, N.C. – Eighth District Congressman Richard Hudson joined Chairman Phil Roe (R-TN), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions for a field hearing on health care challenges facing local workers and employees held at Rowan-Cabarrus Community College’s (RCCC) Concord campus on Tuesday.

Hornwood is the largest private employer in Anson County, with 350 workers, whom Horne called “partners.”

The business provides 80 percent coverage for its employees at a cost to the company of more than $2.5 million last year, or about 5 percent of the company’s revenue, Horne said.

“We don’t do this because we are forced to by any agency, but because it is the right thing to do,” he said.

Horne said the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will increase the company’s health care costs, but the increase will not go to employees. Hornwood expects to pay $63 per covered individual in new fees.

That is money “that could have been invested in new equipment or training for our partners to help keep us competitive,” he said, which will be eaten up in administrative costs.

He added the complexities of the law have taken up numerous hours of Hornwood’s human resources department, and company staff has many unanswered questions.

Tina Haynes, chief resource officer for RCCC, said staff is “alarmed” at how much pending regulations affect the college.

“As currently published, the supporting regulatory framework has far-reaching and significant negative consequences,” she said, and told the congressmen the regulations defining how benefits eligibility works will force RCCC to reduce the number of courses the college allows adjunct faculty to teach and will add a costly administrative burden.

She said the administrative costs to implementing the law, coupled with new IRS regulations for benefits eligibility, also will reduce the effective pay the college can afford for adjunct faculty, and may reduce the number of courses the college can offer.

She asked the congressmen to push for flexibility in the way the law deals with the unique and varied nature of the courses taught at the college.

Ken Conrad, chairman of Libby Hill Seafood Restaurants and vice chair of the National Restaurant Assocation, said the unique characteristics of the food service industry present challenges to implementing the health care law.

He focused on three issues – the definition of a full-time employee, the complexities of a “large employer” designation and potential harm the automatic enrollment provision of the law could cause to some employees.

Conrad said Libby Hill always has used a 40-hour workweek to determine full-time employment, and the law will force them to make changes based on the 30-hour definition.

He said the statute lays out a specific and complicated calculation to determine if a company meets the criteria for a large employer.

“As you might imagine, operators on the bubble of 50 full-time-equivalent employees, which we are, are especially concerned – trying to understand what we must do to complete this complicated calculation,” Conrad said. “It is creating a lot of concern as these businesses who have always considered themselves to be small are now considered to be large.”

He said if his company remains on the threshold, they will not open any more units, because the insurance provision would be a “game-changer” for the company.

Adam Searing, director of the Health Access Coalition at the North Carolina Justice Center, an organization dedicated to fighting poverty and expanding opportunity for North Carolinians, was dismissive of the business representatives’ concerns, saying the law isn’t “the end of civilization.”

“I’ve been hearing so much about how the sky is falling this morning, and I was looking outside to see if it was actually coming down,” he said. “But it’s still up there.”

He pointed to benefits from the law, including the provision that allows adults to stay on their parents’ healthcare plan until age 26.

“That’s a huge benefit,” he said, “I’ve met many people in my travel around the state who have been able to keep their kids on the plan whether they’re in college or not.”

He also pointed out the law eliminates copayments for many preventative healthcare measures.

“This just makes sense,” he said. “I mean, come on, if you’re going to get people to come into the doctor to get a check-up, get screened for diseases that we can treat early, it just makes sense to make that as easy as possible.”

He also said the law makes it harder to charge different people different amounts for the same coverage based on gender or preexisting conditions.

Roe and Hudson listened to the testimonies, asked questions of the panelists and added their own insights.

Roe, a former OB-GYN doctor in Tennessee, said he supports the intent of the law, but its construction and implementation are too complicated.

He said the cost may go down for seniors and those with pre-existing conditions, but it will rise for the young and healthy.

Insurance rates in the individual market are up 25-35 percent, he said. “I mean, Bill Gates is not going to be able to afford healthcare if we don’t do something.”

Hudson asked Conrad if he would need to hire human resource officers and what the cost would be.

Conrad said he believed the cost would be about $160,000 per year, but he wasn’t positive.

“We know it’s going to be quite expensive,” Conrad said, “but we just don’t know how expensive.”

Later, Hudson asked Haynes what real impact new regulations would have on adjunct professors.

She said the effects would vary by college and program, “but I can tell you it would be substantial.”

The testimony from the field hearing will be entered into the official congressional record.