The so-called Wal-Mart bill, which proponents hoped would lead to a tax on big-box retailers that don’t offer health insurance to their employees, has been considerably tamed to a request for data from the Department of Labor on what percentage of companies – large or small – have employer-sponsored health plans.
The bill was amended by a unanimous vote of the Health and Human Services Committee at the request of its original sponsor, Senate President Beth Edmonds. She said there were some “who didn’t want to go as hard and as fast as I wanted to go.”
Even the title of the controversial legislation has been changed. Originally called an Act to Prevent State Taxpayers from Subsidizing Large Employers, the bill is now labeled a Resolution to Collect Information about Employer-Based Health Insurance.
The original bill was seen as a precursor to fair-share legislation passed recently in Maryland that requires employers with 10,000 or more workers in the state to spend at least 8 percent of their payroll on health insurance. If employers don’t spend that much, they are required to pay the difference into Maryland’s Medicaid fund, because their employees often end up as Medicaid recipients.
While the Maryland bill was aimed solely at Wal-Mart, business groups here were concerned it would be expanded to include other companies.
The resolution replacing it asks the Department of Labor to do a statistically accurate sampling of all Maine businesses to determine what percentage are offering health insurance and how many employees are signing up.
“We tried to figure out how to make this bill useful and why people end up on MaineCare (Medicaid) who are employed,” said Rep. Hannah Pingree, D-North Haven, co-chairman of the Health and Human Services Committee. “It’s not about blame or fault.”
Pingree said she expects to hear that cost is the reason some small businesses don’t offer health insurance and cost will be the reason some employees don’t enroll in the plans that are available.
Sen. Richard Rosen, R-Hancock County, a member of the health committee, said, “It’s an entirely different bill,” than the one originally proposed.
“I think that’s reasonable,” he said of the new plan, because “it’s an effort to collect unbiased information.”
Edmonds already amended her bill once. The first version would have required the Department of Health and Human Services to collect and disclose the names of employers whose employees are enrolled in Medicaid, and of persons requesting uncompensated care in a hospital. She changed that to requiring the department to report how many employees – categorized by the type of work they do – are on Medicaid. The department estimated 54,000 Maine workers were on Medicaid in 2005, according to testimony provided by the governor’s Office of Health Policy and Finance.
Now it’s down to a sample of employers from which percentages will be calculated.
Edmonds said what she really wants to find out is whether “the employer-based delivery system of health insurance is going by the wayside.”
Maine, like the rest of the country, has seen a drop in the percentage of people covered by employer-based health insurance, but has made up the difference with Medicaid. Only 10 percent of Maine’s residents have no health insurance – compared to 15.7 percent nationally, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. At the same time, Maine ranks first in the country in terms of the percentage of its population on Medicaid.
“A national solution is ultimately needed,” Edmonds said, but for now she wants to collect data and understand what is really happening in Maine.
“I’m not so eager to harm Maine businesses that I want to arbitrarily apply something,” she said of adopting a fair-share system here like the one in Maryland. She also believes small companies should be treated differently than large ones.
“I have a different feeling about a small employer…than a multi-national corporation that is actually handing out Medicaid applications,” as Wal-Mart is alleged to do, she said.
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