Daines Introduces Legislation to Protect Montanan's Critical Health Services From Obamacare Mandate

Press Release

Representative Steve Daines announced legislation today to protect access to critical health care services for disabled, elderly and low-income Montanans. The bill achieves this crucial objective by ensuring that businesses which provide services through Medicaid and Medicare do not face the crushing burden of Obamacare's employer mandate.

Daines introduced the Ensuring Medicaid and Medicare Access to Providers Act (H.R. 5098) after hearing from various Montana stakeholder groups that the Obamacare mandate would place undue hardships on those who receive in-home care from providers reimbursed through Medicare or Medicaid.

"Montanans have long known that Obamacare's employer mandate is a direct threat to thousands of jobs -- a fact that is becoming all too clear in the in-home care industry. In order to comply with Obamacare's burdensome mandates, these providers will be forced to cut jobs to pay for increased costs -- which hurts elderly, disabled and low-income Montanans who rely on them for critical services," Daines said. "The Ensuring Medicaid and Medicare Access to Providers Act helps these providers by easing the challenges posed by the employer mandate and prevents the need for them to reduce the number of employees, hours or wages to comply with Obamacare."

Daines' legislation provides a 2-year reprieve from the employer mandate to businesses which have a 3-year rolling average of Medicare or Medicaid reimbursements that totals more than 60 percent of gross receipts.

The employer mandate requires businesses with 50 or more full-time employees to offer employer-sponsored health insurance or pay a penalty of $2000 per worker.

"Our company wants to provide health insurance to our hard working employees who assist senior citizens and people with disabilities to continue to live in their own homes in all of the states where we do business. Unfortunately, while we currently offer direct care workers health insurance Montana, Medicaid rates in many other states are too low to enable us to both pay workers a decent wage and provide the insurance that is required by the ACA. This bill will give us time to continue to work with federal and state officials to, hopefully, fix this important problem," Bill Woody, Chairman of Consumer Direct Management Solutions, a Montana-based company specializing in-home services for the elderly and disabled, said. "After two years of trying to get the federal government to try to address the negative impact of the ACA health insurance requirement on Medicaid service recipients, workers and businesses, it is extremely gratifying to find someone who is willing to do something concrete that will actually help rather than just talking about the issue."

"This important legislation will help preserve access to home care for Medicare and Medicaid recipients while providing significant assistance to state Medicaid programs struggling to pay for home and community-based care on limited budgets," Val Halamandaris, President of the National Association for Home Care & Hospice, said.

Long-term care service provider agencies, which employ hundreds of thousands of workers across the country, say complying with the mandate is especially problematic because it would force them to cut jobs or reduce employee hours in order to continue providing services to Medicaid or Medicare recipients. Reimbursement rates from the programs are outside of the control of Medicaid and Medicare-dependent businesses and are considerably below comparable payments in the private market.

Daines plans to be in Missoula on Friday to discuss his bill with area providers and seek feedback on ways to ensure that these providers aren't unfairly hit by onerous Obamacare requirements.

Daines, an outspoken critic of Obamacare, has been working to fully repeal the job-killing law and protect Montanans from its dozens of taxes and regulations. He supports real patient-centered solutions that protect Montanans' access to their doctors and the health care plans they want.

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