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House Hearing, 112TH Congress - Impact of Obamacare On Job Creators and Their Decision To Offer Health Insurance
House Hearing, 112TH Congress - Impact of Obamacare On Job Creators and Their Decision To Offer Health Insurance
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT
AND GOVERNMENT REFORM
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED TWELFTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
JULY 28, 2011
(
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov
http://www.house.gov/reform
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
71968 PDF
WASHINGTON
2012
California, Chairman
ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland, Ranking
Minority Member
EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York
CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York
ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of
Columbia
DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio
JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts
WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri
STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts
JIM COOPER, Tennessee
GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
MIKE QUIGLEY, Illinois
DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois
BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa
PETER WELCH, Vermont
JOHN A. YARMUTH, Kentucky
CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut
JACKIE SPEIER, California
SUBCOMMITTEE
ON
AND THE
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HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,
SUBCOMMITTEE ON HEALTH CARE, DISTRICT OF
COLUMBIA, CENSUS AND THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES,
COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM,
Washington, DC.
The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:35 a.m., in room
2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Trey Gowdy (chairman
of the subcommittee) presiding.
Present: Representatives Gowdy, Gosar, DesJarlais, Davis, Norton, Clay, Murphy, and Cummings.
Staff present: Brian Blase, professional staff member; Robert
Borden, general counsel; Drew Colliatie and Mike Whatley, staff
assistants; Adam P. Fromm, director of Member liaison and floor
operations; Christopher Hixon, deputy chief counsel, oversight;
Sery E. Kim, counsel; Justin LoFranco, press assistant; Jeff Solsby,
senior communications advisor; Jaron Bourke, minority director of
administration; Yvette Cravins, minority counsel; Ashley Etienne,
minority director of communications; Carla Hultberg, minority
chief clerk; and Paul Kincaid, minority press secretary.
Mr. GOWDY. Welcome, everyone. I apologize for being late; we
had a conference that ran a little longer than normal, discussing
some things you may have been reading and hearing about lately.
This is a hearing on the Impact of Obamacare on Job Creators
and Their Decision to Offer Insurance.
The committee will come to order. Consistent with the policy of
the Oversight Committee, I will read the mission statement. We
exist to secure two fundamental principles: first, Americans have
a right to know the money Washington takes from them is well
spent and, second, Americans deserve an efficient, effective government that works for them.
Our duty on the Oversight and Government Reform Committee
is to protect these rights. Our solemn responsibility is to hold government accountable to taxpayers because taxpayers have a right
to know what they get from their government. We will work tirelessly in partnership with citizen watchdogs to deliver the facts to
the American people and bring genuine reform to the Federal bureaucracy. This is the mission of the Oversight and Government
Reform Committee.
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I will now recognize myself for an opening statement. I will recognize the gentleman from Illinois for his opening statement while
I am in the process of finding mine.
Mr. DAVIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Before I begin, let me take the opportunity to acknowledge the
presence of a dear friend of mine and certainly a friend to all of
the people who have been in the House and in the Senate, a former
distinguished Member of this body who was also chairman of the
Small Business Committee and a Member of the U.S. Senate. Senator Jim Talent is with us and I am pleased to see you, Jim. I must
confess that I had two bills that Jim and I co-sponsored that were
passed into law, so he represents some of the proudest moments of
my tenure here, so I am delighted to see him.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. For several years I have been a supporter of a national health plan. Good quality, affordable health
care should not be a privilege afforded to just a few. The Patient
Protection and Affordable Care Act provided a pathway to bring affordable health care for the masses. It balances the needs of businesses and workers with accessibility and affordability. Large and
small businesses consistently express their concerns about rising
health care costs. The Affordable Care Act addresses this concern
with cost containment measures for the employer such as small
business tax credits, insurance market reforms, rate reviews, price
transparency, and the creation of health marketplace exchanges,
just to name a few.
The anticipated reductions on health premiums enabled job creators to hire more workers, increase salaries to maintain their
work forces, and to reinvest in new technologies for their business
growth. The Center for American Progress estimates that health
care reform that reduces premium growth will add 250,000 to
400,000 jobs annually over the next decade.
The Affordable Care Act also addresses the needs of workers.
The act eliminates job lock, which discourages workers from seeking new opportunities for fear of losing health coverage. The ACA
supports the entrepreneurial spirit of the American work force, as
nearly 10 million self-employed Americans have the ability to purchase insurance for their families. Additionally, the act makes
health insurance affordable with premium assistance for eligible
employees.
Last, a recent Harvard study estimated that one American family filed for bankruptcy every 90 seconds in the aftermath of an illness. Three-quarters of them had health insurance at the time of
the precipitating health event. In addition, medical debt burdens
families with the inability to pay for other expenses, contributes to
credit card debt, and causes people to delay necessary medical care.
The Affordable Care Act ensures that these nightmare scenarios
will no longer be common.
In my district there are many Medicare and Medicaid recipients
that have established community health centers as their medical
home. Medicaid beneficiaries that rely on health centers for usual
care were 19 percent less likely to use the emergency room at a
hospital than other providers for non-emergency and usual care
services. Overall, health centers save the health care system between $9.9 billion and $17.6 billion annually. Community health
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centers provide high quality health care regardless of the ability to
pay, and health centers in Illinois have a tremendous impact on
our economy and employment.
In 2008, 40 health centers operated over 350 sites, contributed
almost $1 billion to the Illinois economy, and directly employed almost 6,000 Illinoisans. Indeed, for every 10 people employed by an
Illinois health center, an additional four jobs were created in their
surrounding communities. Illinois health centers served over 1.1
million patients, nearly 80 percent of whom had no health insurance, helping them cope with chronic health conditions and general
health issues to be able to work and care for their families. Repeal
of the health care law would eliminate $11 billion in support for
our community health centers over the next 5 years. Funding that
would nearly double the number of patients served today and
greatly strengthens Illinoiss economy.
I know a little bit about health care, given the fact that my congressional district has more than 20 hospitals, 21 to be exact; four
medical schools; a large number of community health centers and
other outlets. And I can tell you that health care is the lifeblood
of our community.
Simply put, the Affordable Health Care Act is indeed progress.
I thank you for this hearing and yield back the balance of my
time.
Mr. GOWDY. I thank the gentleman from Illinois.
First I want to thank all of our distinguished witnesses for your
patience and for your willingness to lend us your insight and your
perspective on what all of us agree is a very important issue.
As we sit here this morning, Washington is debating the relative
merits and demerits of deals or plans or solutions, whatever euphemism you want to use, averting the short-term debt crisis. However, our country continues to face long-term fiscal crises, some of
which is rooted in the calls that we need substantive reform and
return to our founding principles.
Quite simply, government is too big. Out of control spending and
over-regulation have threatened Americas credit rating and crippled businesss ability to create jobs. When asked what the single
greatest impediment to job growth is in the United States today,
and I hasten to add I come from a State with about 10 percent unemployment and some counties are as much as 20 percent, but
when asked what the greatest impediment to job growth is in the
United States, the founder of Home Depot simply responded, the
U.S. Government. That is a stinging indictment.
Our dire economic situation requires us to take a hard look at
every dollar we spend and fundamentally reform programs headed
down the wrong path to fiscal insolvency. At the same time, we
must be enacting pro-growth policies, paving the way for American
companies to grow and expand, creating the jobs that will spark a
broader economic resurgence, which brings us to why we are here
today.
The current health care law was marketed to the American people as a means to provide high quality, low cost health coverage options to every citizen in the country, while ensuring that those who
like their current coverage can keep it. However, time and time
again we have discovered examples exposing this political myth.
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The uncertainty surrounding the laws broader implementation and
the expectation of future taxes have worsened an already dreary
economic picture.
While we often hear about the looming debt crisis, we are also
in the midst of a job crisis, one that Obamacare has done nothing
to ameliorate and, in many instances, has served to exacerbate.
From new taxes to increased government mandates and regulations, to picking winners and losers based on arbitrary criteria, the
new legislation burdens businesses with confusion and uncertainty,
the exact wrong prescription for turning around our floundering
economy.
Further, as the full impact of certain sections become more clear,
we are uncovering myriad disincentives and hidden taxes embedded within the law that served to negatively impact businesses
bottom line, while CBO estimates the law will reduce the number
of jobs by 80,000 by the end of the decade. Finally, instead of allowing employees to keep the coverage they currently have, tax subsidies in Obamacare will cause many employers to drop workplace
health coverage, forcing workers to purchase their own insurance,
all the while skyrocketing costs and further deepening our Nations
budget deficit.
In a recent survey, McKinsey & Co. found that 30 percent of employers will definitely or probably drop health insurance in 2014,
a scenario not contemplated when the initial costs were calculated
in a rushed, predominantly hidden, legislative process. Thus, the
Federal Government will yet again pick up the tab, an outcome
that is simply unacceptable and untenable, given the current fiscal
climate.
So we are here today to examine the true impact of Obamacare
on you, Americas job creators, and whether employees across the
country will be dropped from their current coverage based on
Obamacares arcane requirements.
With that, on behalf of all of us, other Members will have 7 days
to submit opening statements and extraneous material for the
record.
We will introduce our distinguished panel. From my left to right,
your right to left, Andrew Puzder is the CEO of CKE Restaurants,
which I have a parenthetical that says Hardees and Carls Jr. My
history could very well be wrong. I think Hardees may have its origin in the upstate of South Carolina and specifically perhaps in
Spartanburg, with Mr. Richardson and Mr. Bradshaw, but if I am
wrong on that, as I frequently am. Sir?
Mr. PUZDER. [Remarks made off mic.]
Mr. GOWDY. Okay, good. Well, as usual, I am close, but wrong.
[Laughter.]
I hope my wife is listening.
Grady Payne is president of Connor Industries. Welcome.
Mr. Will Morey is the president and CEO of Moreys Piers. Welcome.
Victoria Braden is the president and CEO of Braden Benefit
Strategies, Inc. Welcome.
Mr. Brewer is the president of Lockton Benefit Group. Welcome,
Mr. Brewer.
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Mr. Terry Gardiner is the vice president of Small Business Majority. Welcome.
Consistent with committee rules, all witnesses must be sworn before they testify, so I would ask you to please rise and raise your
right hands.
[Witnesses sworn.]
Mr. GOWDY. May the record reflect all witnesses answered in the
affirmative.
There should be a series of lights, which mean what they traditionally mean in our culture; green means go, yellow means speed
up and try to get under the light, and red means stop.
We will now recognize you for 5 minutes. The yellow light or
amber light means you have about a minute left and the red light
means stop. So we will begin with Mr. Puzder and go from left to
right.
STATEMENTS OF ANDREW PUZDER, CEO, CKE RESTAURANTS;
GRADY PAYNE, CONNOR INDUSTRIES, INC.; WILL MOREY,
PRESIDENT AND CEO, MOREYS PIERS; VICTORIA J. BRADEN,
PRESIDENT AND CEO, BRADEN BENEFIT STRATEGIES, INC.;
MICHAEL J. BREWER, PRESIDENT, LOCKTON BENEFIT
GROUP; AND TERRY GARDINER, VICE PRESIDENT, SMALL
BUSINESS MAJORITY
STATEMENT OF ANDREW PUZDER
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Our franchisees own 70 percent of the restaurant, so they spend,
you would assume, about $70 million in addition to that 30. We
spent $60 million on capital expenditures; building restaurants, remodeling restaurants, and investing in our infrastructure. The people we employ in these concentric circles that really grow out from
our restaurants went to grocery stores, went to the movies, spent
their kids to school, bought cars, bought houses; just creating jobs
on a very broad basis, which is the way free enterprise system
works. And you can see other businesses with concentric circles
growing out from them that overlap and really drive the greatest
economy the world has ever known.
I am very concerned that in the coming years we will be unable
to create as many jobs as we could like due to the increased expenses necessitated by laws such as the PPACA. I will start with
the laws menu labeling provision. That requires disclosure of the
caloric content of our products on our menu boards.
Now, as a company, we support nutritional disclosure, we have
and have for years had comprehensive, effective, and economic nutritional disclosure in our restaurants and broadly available online
at our Web site. We estimate that should we have to replace the
menu boards in all of our restaurants, the cost would be approximately $1.5 million. That is 17 percent of the $8.8 million we invested last year on job-creating new restaurant construction.
Independent research done to date demonstrates that caloric
menu labeling has no impact on consumers eating habits. In other
words, this was a politically correct solution that is ineffective and
imposes unnecessary costs on American businesses that could better spend their money and their time creating jobs and economic
prosperity. Nutrition disclosure can be accomplished effectively,
comprehensively, and economically. The current law simply fails in
all three of these respects.
Now on to the ACAs mandatory medical coverage provisions. I
am not an expert on health care law other than how it impacts our
company. I also know that there are people who believe universal
health care coverage is beneficial, and I am not here to debate that.
However, there is a sacrifice that must be made to gain that benefit. The question is whether the costs are worth the benefits.
The ACA will eliminate job creation and opportunity. Our best
estimate, the ACA will increase our health care costs approximately $18 million per year, should it be implemented, as we currently understand the regulations. That is a 150 percent increase
from the $12 million we spent on health care last year and approximately double the $8.8 million we spent on job-creating new restaurants. At this point, we do not intend to drop coverage for our
employees, but the money to comply with the ACA must come from
somewhere.
We use our revenue to pay our bills and expenses, to pay down
our debt, and we reinvest what is left in our business. That is how
we create jobs. There is no corporate pot of gold we can go to to
cover increased health care costs. New unit construction will cease
if we have to allocate the moneys for that construction to the ACA,
and building new restaurants is how we create jobs.
We would also have to reduce our other capital spending, and
capital spending not only creates jobs, but is important to main-
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taining and growing our business. We would need to reduce the
number of our full-time employees and increase the number of our
part-time employees. We would need to automate positions where
we could and reduce compensations for the positions that we retain.
As I speak with franchisees and encourage them to build new
restaurants, I am constantly met with concern about their economic futures. They are concerned about poorly conceived government regulations as the ACAs menu labeling provision. They are
concerned about the ACAs mandatory health care coverage provisions, stifling growth and possibly requiring that they close restaurants that are marginally profitable now, but which would be
unprofitable once the ACA comes into effect. The result is stagnation.
The simple fact is that regulations such as those growing out of
the ACA do impose costs, and those costs do result in reduced
growth, stifling both job creation and prosperity. Prosperity is neither Republican nor Democrat, it is neither liberal nor conservative; it is a bipartisan issue. People are unsure about their futures. American people are suffering because they dont have jobs.
American businesses want to create jobs, and we respectfully request that Congress review the ACA to determine which provisions
can be administered in a way that reduces costs for the businesses
they impact.
We would further request that Congress review the ACAs provisions to determine which provisions, on balance, are detrimental to
our Nations economic prosperity and eliminate such provisions. If
done effectively, this review would encourage job creation and prosperity, as well as better government.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Puzder follows:]
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Mr. GOWDY. Thank you, Mr. Puzder.
Mr. Payne.
STATEMENT OF GRADY PAYNE
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The impact of this law will cost our company $1 million or more
no matter which option we take and, worse, some of the extra
costs, if not all of it, may be classified as a penalty and not tax deductible. We would owe income tax plus the penalty. Today, these
estimates total more than the company makes.
We have been very blessed to be a profitable company, even in
these hard times. We have had to make many sacrifices and pay
bonus programs and people. We have no tax loopholes; we are a tax
paying company.
We are a company caught in the middle. As the law stands now,
our 30-year business is at risk of being legislated out of business.
How can this be? Our lives are in this company. We have done a
good job for our customers, our employees, and all our families. We
understand the goal of getting everyone medical coverage, and we
agree that it is a worthy goal, but the massive cost hits us right
between the eyes. We are too small to get favorable group rates or
self-insured contracts, and too large by statute to be exempt, even
though our profit centers are less than 50 employees in each location. There has to be a more equitable way to achieve this goal
than to cripple a small business like ours. The ratio of cost to earnings is overwhelming for a company our size.
We have seen bad markets before, though none as bad as this
one. Our current capital expansion and business development plans
are and will be stopped by this law because expansion and hiring
requires cash. The impact of the law robs us of our needed growth
capital. Our goals turn from hire and grow to cut and survive.
I thank all of you for your service to our great Nation and for
allowing me to plead the case of Connor Industries.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Payne follows:]
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Mr. GOWDY. Thank you, Mr. Payne.
Mr. Morey.
STATEMENT OF WILL MOREY
Mr. MOREY. Yes, sir. Good morning, Chairman Gowdy and Ranking Member Davis. Thank you for the opportunity to speak today
on this important matter. My name is Will Morey. I am president
of Moreys Piers.
Moreys Piers is a family business that began in 1969. It began
with very humble beginnings, a single giant slide on a postagestamp piece of property along the boardwalk along the sea in Wildwood, New Jersey. It now consists of three piers, two water parks,
and 120 rides or attractions.
Our operating season is primarily from Memorial to Labor Day;
however, we operate shoulder seasons weekends, starting Easter
and concluding on Halloween. We have 110 year-round benefited
staff members and we grow to an additional 1,500 seasonal staff
members during that time.
I am privileged also to be the Vice Chair of our International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions, which represents
3,000 fixed site supplier and individual members in the United
States, and I will be chairman of that organization in 2013.
By way of perspective on the industry, our total domestic economic impact is approximately $53 billion. We employee 700,000,
of which 600,000 are seasonal employees, typically young people in
their first jobs, retirees, school teachers, and others supplementing
their incomes during the summer months.
Now, there is a tremendous amount of uncertainty related to this
bill, from my perspective, but there is one thing that I know at
Moreys Piers we can be certain about, and that is the inclusion of
seasonal workers and the definition of full-time employee, and the
lack of suitable recognition of seasonal employees within our industry will cause severe negative consequences to our business.
Now, I am here to be constructive and I would really like to be
a part of the solution, but the fact is, as it stands, the law will have
a substantial negative impact to our industry, on our seasonal employees, and our permanent employees as well. From our point of
view, the law is a large expense; it is an administrative nightmare.
It is hard to see any appreciable benefit to anyone working at
Moreys Piers, but it is easy to see the negative impact on our ability to provide jobs and run our business productively.
Now, it is important to note that our industry seasonal workers
are hired for short, temporary periods. They have very different set
of expectations and responsibilities than full-time employees, and
they were clearly an element of the work force that Congress did
not pay close attention to in drafting the bill. The law will force
businesses like Moreys Piers to provide health insurance to seasonal workers and, as a result, we have the following concerns:
Immediate loss of jobs, including full-time positions due to decreased profitability; negative economic impact on the communities
surrounding attractions such as ours as operating schedules are adjusted and employment is curtailed; and the promotion of a seasonal labor society that schedules employees under 30 hours per
week or terminates employment before 90 days. This will happen
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across the entire country, hurting both seasonal businesses and
seasonal employees. And very importantly and close to my heart is
the ability to be able to reinvest. Capital is an incredibly important
part of the attraction industry, and reinvesting in our businesses
is critical to creating growth and future jobs.
Additionally, the administrative and compliance issues are, simply put, extreme. The majority of these workers are employed 5
months or less. By the time the 90-day administrative period
passes, they will have insurance for less than 2 months, at most.
Many of these seasonal workers get their health care from other
sourcesparents, university, their primary full-time positionsand
will opt out of our coverage. Yet, we still have to do the following:
ensure compliance, track work days, track average hours per week,
offer the insurance, educate and present the insurance program,
auto enroll into the insurance program, get declinations to the program, and maintain records for all of the above.
Consider a work force that swells from 110 to 1,600 employees,
with individuals starting and ending their employment every day
of the week throughout the season. Just imagine tracking and
managing this information. This is unreasonably burdensome and
will provide little to no benefit to the seasonal employees.
Now, the bottom line is the inclusion of seasonal workers in the
definition of full-time employee will needlessly cause severe negative consequences to businesses like Moreys Piers, to seasonal and
full-time employees and to their communities. Ultimately, if this
law is to go into effect, it should be amended to properly recognize
the real world of seasonal employees and their tremendous importance to our industry and to our national economy.
I would like to conclude just by mentioning that we really want
to be a great business. We want to grow. We want to support our
community. We want to create as many career opportunities we
can. That is what life in America is about. So please dont burden
us with a needless compliance and other issues that come along
with this bill.
Thank you for your attention and consideration of this important
matter.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Morey follows:]
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Mr. GOWDY. Thank you, Mr. Morey.
Ms. Braden.
STATEMENT OF VICTORIA J. BRADEN
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On January 1, 2014, and I think this is probably the basis of why
I am here, we expect 22 of our 65 clients to immediately drop their
group health insurance. The size of the clients that we service will
have no cost to the employer to not have insurance; there will be
no penalty and no fine. Of those companies, I expect 769 people to
be added to the exchange rules.
Through PPACA, the taxpayer is now subsidizing the cost when
that happens, of small business employees health insurance. Our
conservative estimate of 462 will be the first year, and other businesses will leave shortly after that.
We always said the young and the healthy would take this bill
and make it worthwhile. It will not, because the young and the
healthy will find a way around the bill. We have already seen that
through the self-funded small business pieces that are being developed.
I would just ask you to reconsider not only the job loss of the bill,
but the cost of the bill both to employers and to the unexpected
consequences of what it is going to cost the U.S. Government.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Braden follows:]
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Mr. GOWDY. Thank you, Ms. Braden.
Mr. Brewer.
STATEMENT OF MICHAEL J. BREWER
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The employer pay-or-play mandate in 2014 poses additional problems for employers because of the sizable difference between what
most employers pay to supply coverage for an employee and the
penalty they would pay if they terminated coverage, the vast majority of our clients have a significant financial incentive to exit the
group insurance market in 2014. On average, our clients outside
the retail, restaurant, and hospitality industries would save 44 percent off their current health care budget by terminating their group
plans, leading nearly 20 percent to tell us they would consider
doing just that in 2014.
About 80 percent of our clients indicate they dont expect to consider terminating coverage, but the reason they give is the perceived need to provide health insurance to attract and retain clients. We are concerned that the moment they see they dont have
to offer competitive health insurance, that 80 percent number could
drop significantly. This would result in huge increases in exchange
participation and subsidy liability for taxpayers.
Seventeen percent of our survey respondents said they would
work to avoid play-or-pay penalties by substituting more part-time
employees for full-time workers. Forty-four percent said they would
reduce the employer subsidy toward employee coverage and 43 percent they said they would reduce the employers subsidy toward dependent coverage. That does not bode well for working Americans.
Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. In assessing the impact of this legislation, I urge you to place yourselves
not only in the shoes of those Americans who need and deserve access to affordable health care coverage, but also in the shoes of the
employers who supply valued coverage to 160 million of us. As one
of our survey respondents wrote, this plan doesnt fix the health
care problems, but shifts the burden to employers to take care of
the issue without any type of assistance in covering the increase
in cost.
We look forward to answering your questions and working with
you to address the issues raised by our employer clients. Thank
you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Brewer follows:]
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Mr. GOWDY. Thank you, Mr. Brewer.
Mr. Gardiner.
STATEMENT OF TERRY GARDINER
Mr. GARDINER. Good morning, Chairman Gowdy, Ranking Member Davis, and members of the subcommittee. Thank you for the
opportunity to testify on the number one problem facing small business, the ever-rising health care cost. I am Terry Gardiner. I am
vice president of policy at Small Business Majority.
Small Business Majority is a national nonprofit small business
advocacy organization founded and run by small business owners.
I myself have spent most of my career, I was kind of shocked to
add it up and to think I started my first business 40 years ago as
a self-employed commercial fisherman in Alaska, where I grew up.
Went on to create a seafood processing company that grew over 22
years, and when I retired, it had 1,000 employees with over $100
million in sales, exporting to 22 countries.
Other members of our senior team at Small Business Majority
are also entrepreneurs. And as business owners we are well aware
that government policies can take either of two courses, they can
help promote job creation and help promote business, and, at the
same time, there can be other laws and regulations, in our experience, that can definitely be a burden on business and discourage
growth. So we are not unaware of those situations from our own
personal experience.
But the problem facing small businesses, those 22 million selfemployed out there, one-third of whom dont have coverage, and
the nearly 6 million small businesses with under 100 employees,
they keep saying that health care costs, ever-rising, are their number one problem. We have done a lot of polling, scientific polls
across the country, national and in many, many States between
December 2008 and August 2009, 67 percent of respondents said
reform was urgently needed to fix the economy. An average of 86
percent of those companies who do not provide coverage said they
couldnt afford it. Seventy-two percent of those offering health benefits said they were struggling to do so and cited the cost as the
reason they were struggling. So this simply paints a status quo
that is unacceptable for small business.
We have also done some economic research that was conducted
by MIT economist Jonathan Gruber to look at the scenarios. Our
country then and now does face alternatives, we could do nothing
about our health care system or we could try to change it so it
works better. So we looked at those alternatives.
Doing nothing is a job killer. Grubers projection showed that
over the next decade small employers would pay $2.4 trillion in
health care costs, there would be a loss of 178,000 jobs. There
would be negative impacts for employees, too; $834 billion in reduced business wages and a reduction in profits. So doing nothing
is not a great scenario.
So that moves us to where we are at now, where we have the
Affordable Care Act as the law in the country that we are here
today discussing, projected by CBO that it would have the benefit
of reducing the Federal deficit by $200 million over the next 10
years and $1 trillion over the following decade, which is a positive
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for all businesses and all citizens. But the point for small businesses is to reduce their cost so that they can keep more money
in their bank account, which is what they use as fuel to expand
and create jobs.
And there are many provisions in the ACA that are going to help
small businesses, many of which do not offer health coverage now,
and many self-employed simply cant afford it. So there are new
mechanisms here in the ACA; tax credits for small employers.
There are health insurance exchanges that will be established in
the 50 States. Some States have already moved forward; Massachusetts, Utah. We have exchanges that have been in effect for 15
years in Connecticut and provides a lot of insurance to small
groups.
So we know there are problems. You have heard about some of
them here today with the ACA. We are not here to say they are
perfect, but we think focusing on these and fixing them would be
a better course of action than going backward.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Gardiner follows:]
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Mr. GOWDY. Thank you, Mr. Gardiner.
I will recognize myself for 5 minutes of questions.
I will direct this to the first three witnesses to my left. What
should the Federal Government do or stop doing to enable you to
create more jobs?
Mr. PUZDER. The Government now is doing a lot to create a high
degree of uncertainty in the business community. We are uncertain
about what tax rates are going to be; we are very uncertain about
health care costs, and the only thing we are certain about is that
they are going to go way up. We are uncertain what is going to
happen with energy, with the EPA. We are uncertain about unionization with the NLRB. There is a lot of uncertainty out there.
When businesses are going to invest and create jobs, they generally
want to come up with a 5-year business plan which shows you get
a return on your investment at about 20 percent a year, and at the
end of 5 years you have gotten a return on your initial investment.
If you cant do a forecast because you dont know your costs, you
dont know your expenses, and what you do know you dont like,
you are not going to invest. And American businesses are stalled.
I think that chart shows it up there. People are not investing because they cant show a profitable return of their investment. And
if you think your expenses are going to go way up and you have
two choices on what to do with your money, retain it so you can
cover your expenses, or invest it to grow and create jobs, you are
going to hold on to your cash.
So we are not seeing the kind of investment we should be seeing,
and if the Government would just work to create some certainties,
some positive certainty for the business community, I think you
would see an explosion of job creation.
Mr. GOWDY. Some of us like to say that our tax, regulatory, litigation structures create the uncertainty that stifle job creation. Is
that a fair statement; tax, litigation, regulation?
Mr. PUZDER. I think that is a very fair statement.
Mr. GOWDY. Mr. Payne, what employees, what categories of employees are most likely to be adversely impacted by the implementation of Obamacare?
Mr. PAYNE. Well, in our company, it is going to impact all of us;
it spreads completely out through the organization. We cant necessarily cut sections out; we are kind of a complete pie. So if you
cut part of it down somewhere, you have to equally pull out the
support structure that goes with it across the lines. It is going to
impact every area that we are involved in.
I agree with everything that was just said. In our case, our
plants that we put in are about $1 million investments. We add
people less than 50 generally and we pump about $1 million in
payroll into those plants on an annual basis. We cannot add any
more plants not knowing what the cost structures are going to be
going forward. Will we cut people? We are trying to cut people now.
So it has an impact on all of us.
Mr. GOWDY. Mr. Morey, the President famously said that if you
like your health insurance, you will be able to keep it. With respect
to your company, is that statement true?
Mr. MOREY. Back to the comment that was made later about uncertainty, that is one of our great concerns. We would like to offer
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our private plan essentially to out staff members; they are very important to us, we want to see that they have a great plan and they
are well taken care of in that area. But it is unclear to us whether
or not that is going to be the case or not. And when we look at
things like the burden of the seasonal issue that I have been speaking of and what that means to us in terms of cost and compliance,
that endangers our ability to be able to provide the coverage that
we are providing now.
Mr. GOWDY. Mr. Gardiner, I only have a little bit of time left, so
if I could get just a yes or no response from you on whether or not
you support some other initiatives that mightsome of our health
care woes. Do you support incentivizing health savings accounts?
Mr. GARDINER. I am not sure what you mean by incentivizing.
Mr. GOWDY. Through our tax structure, flexible spending accounts.
Mr. GARDINER. I think they work too.
Mr. GOWDY. Do you support creating the same tax treatment for
employees who want to purchase health insurance as the employer
has?
Mr. GARDINER. You mean self-employed?
Mr. GOWDY. No, I mean an employee. If they want to purchase
health insurance on their own, should they enjoy the same tax benefits as employers?
Mr. GARDINER. Well, this is a particular problem for self-employed now. We have the 1-year provision that needs to be extended that self-employed dont have the same tax.
Mr. GOWDY. I am not talking about self-employees, I am talking
about individual employees. Individuals who want to purchase
health insurance, should they have the same favorable tax treatment as employers?
Mr. GARDINER. Yes.
Mr. GOWDY. Medical malpractice reform, does your organization
support that?
Mr. GARDINER. Yes, and we did during the ACA. We are on
record as supporting that.
Mr. GOWDY. Thank you. My time has expired and I will recognize
the gentleman from Maryland, the ranking member of the full committeedo we go to Mr. Davis? I will recognize the gentleman from
Illinois, ranking member of the subcommittee, Mr. Davis.
Mr. DAVIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
Let me thank our witnesses. I must say that I was seriously impacted by all of your businesses, your courage, your determination,
the tenacity, the fact that you have been able to make conscious
use of yourselves to build strong businesses and provide opportunities for other people to work.
Mr. Gardiner, can I ask you have you ever had any employees
who didnt earn enough money to pay for health insurance?
Mr. GARDINER. Yes.
Mr. DAVIS. Mr. Brewer, have you ever had any employees who
didnt earn enough money to pay for health insurance?
Mr. BREWER. Yes, sir.
Mr. DAVIS. Ms. Braden, have you ever had any who didnt earn
enough to pay for health insurance?
Ms. BRADEN. No.
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Mr. DAVIS. No?
Ms. BRADEN. No.
Mr. DAVIS. Mr. Morey, have you ever hired anybody that didnt
make enough money to pay for health insurance? You have?
Mr. Payne, have you ever had any who didnt earn enough?
Mr. PAYNE. I am not sure that I know the answer to that because
I dont know what costs would be. But I have people that have
turned down insurance before because of cost.
Mr. DAVIS. Mr. Puzder, have you ever hired anyone who didnt
have enough money when they got through to pay for health insurance?
Mr. PUZDER. Well, we have a number of part-time employees who
may not have enough, but we do offer them a very low mini-med
affordable plan. I really cant say that I have ever done any research on that, but we probably have part-time employees who
couldnt afford the plan.
Mr. DAVIS. Well, let me ask you this question. Can you think of
anything in life more important than being healthy?
Mr. PUZDER. No. Well, your family, belief in God.
Mr. DAVIS. That is a good point, especially belief in God. I happen to be a practicing Christian, and I notice at my church that
everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die. That
sort of reminds me of Frederick Douglas sometime when they were
talking about the abolition of slavery, and every time somebody
would come up with a way to do it, there would be a reason why
it couldnt get done, and he ended up saying that there are those
who reminded him of people who might have wanted the rain, but
without the thunder and the lightning, or they wanted the crops
without plowing up the ground, or they may have even wanted the
ocean without the roar of the mighty waters. So it seems to me
that there are things that we want to happen, but somehow or another we cant bring ourselves to the point of doing what is necessary.
Do we believe in tax credits? Let me ask. Have any of you ever
used tax credits in any facet of your businesses?
Mr. PUZDER. I am sure that whenever they are available we use
them.
Mr. DAVIS. And so if tax credits are made available for small
businesses to help provide health insurance for employees, that
might be one way of helping some of those individuals who had no
other way of being insured.
Mr. PUZDER. I think it would, Congressman, but I will tell you
that we offer all of our employees health care coverage inexpensively, and I think of our 17,000 part-time employees, about 6 percent choose to take the health care coverage over the cash. So it
is 94 percent would rather have the job and the compensation.
Mr. DAVIS. Oh, I would certainly agree. And I guess when you
say small business, it would be kind of difficult for one to suggest
that your company was a small business, I mean by pretty much
any standard.
Mr. PUZDER. But, Congressman, we deal primarily with larger
employers, but I fundamentally believe that the same advantages
that are available for larger employers ought to be available to
smaller employers as well.
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Mr. DAVIS. Well, let me ask you do you believe that health care
should be a right, and not a privilege?
Mr. PUZDER. That is a difficult question. You know, we have created a system where people dont have to buy health care to get
health care. I would certainly like to believe that it is a right. I
think that there are fundamentally some better ways that we could
go about some of this. And I will tell you that our firm has been
historically pro on health reform. It is exactly what you said, it is
just the form that that takes.
Mr. DAVIS. Well, see, I think that at the base of the discussion
is what we believe in terms of individuals who live in our society.
Ms. Braden, you were about to say something?
Ms. BRADEN. I was. I am the person that actually deals with the
small, small businesses I think that you were referring to, and on
the tax credit that we have on the floor right now, the $25,000 of
income and you could do that, I dont have but a handful of employers out of my group that can actually take advantage of that, and
those employers are all nonprofits, so they are taking advantage of
it against their FICA taxes. So that piece of it I dont see.
As far as health insurance being a fundamental right, so is being
healthy, and people have a responsibility to that, and we are not
seeing that in any of our small groups; we are not seeing folks
going out and actually working to be healthy, which would then
bring down the health insurance costs.
Mr. DAVIS. Well, I think we could debate that a great deal, but
my time is up.
Mr. GOWDY. I thank the gentleman from Illinois.
We now recognize the gentleman from Tennessee, Dr. DesJarlais.
Mr. DESJARLAIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And thank you, panel, for appearing here today. There are so
many questions in so many directions I would like to go today,
after hearing your testimony, and I dont think I have ever sat
through a hearing where the testimony was almost so self-explanatory that a lot of the questions I had to ask have already been answered to some extent.
Mr. Payne, you had laid out three options for your company in
terms of health care. When we discuss Obamacare now, sometimes
we get chastised for using that term, Obamacare; it is known as
the Affordable Health Care Act. After laying out your three options, do you agree that it is affordable?
Mr. PAYNE. It is not affordable to us. The way it is structured,
and talking about the credits for small business, we consider ourselves a small business and some of the exemptions for less than
50 employees really hurt us; we dont get those exemptions, yet we
are competing against the people that do. So it ought to be more
of a level playing field.
But to answer your question, no, it is not affordable. Is the current system good? I wont say that the current system is good, but
we are surviving and making a profit and growing and hiring people with the current system, dealing with year-to-year increases in
the programs, dealing through the insurance companies. Under the
new program it could be that we may not have a business to grow.
So it has definitely changed.
Mr. DESJARLAIS. Thank you.
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Mr. Gardiner, today the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services actuary stated health care costs will double by 2020. Considering President Obama passed Obamacare to reduce health care
costs now, will your business be able to cope with these increased
health care costs?
Mr. GARDINER. Well, fortunately for me, I have reached that retirement age and dont own a business today.
Mr. DESJARLAIS. But you represent several.
Mr. GARDINER. Yes. And I think that there is more that needs
to be done about cost containment. I think that was very evident
during the whole debate of the Affordable Care Act. More needs to
be done and we have faced these kind of racing costs. If you look
at a graph, as I did when I retired and got into health care, these
costs have been going up like a rocket for decades.
Mr. DESJARLAIS. Okay, but we as a Congress, I wasnt here at
the time, but we then passed massive sweeping health care reform
that we didnt ask for, we dont want, and apparently we certainly
cant afford. So here we are moving forward with what did then
Speaker Pelosi say, we need to pass this bill so we can find out
what is in it?
From what I am hearing from this panel up here today, I doubt
that anybody sat down with business folks like this and listened
to what they have to say before this bill was constructed, and I can
tell you as a physician I dont think they sat down with health care
professionals either to see whether or not this was feasible.
So now we have this problem. You are sitting here wondering
how we are going to continue to employ people in this Nation. The
greatest crisis facing our country right now is unemployment and
spending, and everything about this bill that I can see is nothing
but driving up cost and government spending, and, frankly, government spending is nothing more than taxes. Our government doesnt
generate any revenue outside of taxes. So, anyway, I wanted to ask
a few more questions.
Mr. Brewer, the CBO has estimated that as many as 12 million
employees could be forced into the exchanges. Do you find this
number accurate?
Mr. BREWER. No. I think the CBO is made up of smart, hardworking, well-intentioned people. I dont know how much interaction they have with people who have employees and payrolls and
have to make these decisions, but I can tell you we dealt with
about 3,000 of them last year and the year before that and the year
before that. So I think the incentives that we uncovered in our actuarial studies, as well as the information we got as a result of our
survey, would suggest to me, I dont know how many renewals
CBO did last year, but, as I said, we did about 3,000, and we are
coming to a much different conclusion based upon that information.
Mr. DESJARLAIS. Okay. Thank you.
Mr. Puzder, will the health care law lead you to automate more
services or replace full-time workers with part-time staff?
Mr. PUZDER. Thank you, Congressman. Absolutely. People who
are currently full-time employees we will have to make part-time
employees, which means they will have to have two jobs to get a
full-time salary. We will automate positions such as the cashier.
Right now they have those ordering kiosks like the ATM or what
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you see at the gas station where you pay with your credit card. We
havent used those because we like the personal touch and they are
a little expensive, but once you implement this health care bill, I
think those kiosks are going to become much more desirable. So I
will be reducing labor force and also automating positions.
Mr. DESJARLAIS. Well, I am out of time, but just quickly, do you
believe most of your workers prefer a job or government health insurance?
Mr. PUZDER. Absolutely. And I think the fact that only 6 percent
of the 17,000 part-time employees we offer insurance to take it
would be a very strong indication that that is true.
Mr. DESJARLAIS. Thank you.
I yield back.
Mr. GOWDY. I thank the gentleman from Tennessee.
The Chair would now recognize the gentleman from Maryland,
the ranking member of the full committee, Mr. Cummings.
Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I want to
thank you for calling this hearing. As I was sitting here listening,
I could not help but think about my days as an employer of a small
law firm. We provided insurance for our employees and it took
away from our profit, but we did it. We did it because we believe
that it was the right thing to do. There were only three lawyers,
but we had about five clericals and we did it.
Let me also say this. I am not here to chastise anybody about
anything, but I take great offense when I hear the word
Obamacare. There is no such thing. Members of this Congress
voted for this legislation and many of us have very strong feelings
about it because we are seeing people in our districts without insurance; we are seeing people literally die, and that is a very serious thing.
So there has to be a balance here, and I appreciate your comments, because I can look at this thing from a small business employer for 20 years, but I can also look at it from the standpoint
of a legislator who has seen the results of people who end up in
emergency rooms and we are paying a lot more through emergency
room care, and we all end up paying for that.
But you said something, Ms. Braden, that I found very intriguing
and very interesting, and correct me if I am wrong. You said something to the effect that you saw people that were not, you said, not
seeing anyone trying to be healthy. What did you mean by that and
how do you know that?
Ms. BRADEN. Because I deal every day with the people inside the
companies that I work with. Thank you for asking. If you look at
people and healthy, we are not talking health insurance. When you
go to the emergency room, you are receiving health care. And we
sort of have taken those two subjects and melded them together,
and really I think what we need to do is separate them apart.
If you take health insurance, what it does is support people in
health care. If people are getting health care, that is one thing; but
if they are not taking care of themselves, then they are driving up
the cost of health care, which does drive up the cost of insurance.
Mr. CUMMINGS. I guess what I am saying to you is that there are
a lot of people who, first of all, part of the Affordable Care Act, one
of the driving forces was to keep people well, and another thing
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that we were trying to do was to try to drive down the cost that
these insurance companies were charging for these policies. It is a
hard thing to control.
Ms. BRADEN. Well, in insurance it is really easy. It is premium
paid in, claims paid out. So if you want to control health care costs,
you have to control claims paid out. I mean, insurance isnt hard,
it is a pass-through. The reason we have insurance was to make
deals with doctors and hospitals at a reduced cost so that every individual company didnt have to go do those negotiations.
Mr. CUMMINGS. I understand. But did you realize that when we
were going through this there were insurance companies literally
out in California went up on their rates 30 percent? Thirty percent.
Ms. BRADEN. When I looked at some of those policies, because we
heard about BlueCross BlueShield out there, and I called some of
my folks out there that I work with, there was one policy that they
said 59 percent. Well, that was five people on it and the policy was
very rich and had been constructed over 20 years ago.
Mr. CUMMINGS. Well, that is one, but I am just saying, well, I
dont want to get caught up in this, but what I am trying to say
to you is there is one thing, when we talk to health care insurance
people, it is not as simple as you are making it sound, in and out.
That sounds nice, and if that were true, that would be nice, but
part of the Affordable Health Care Act was to try to say to these
companies that were spending, say, for example, insurance companies spending 35 percent on overhead, 40 percent on overhead, that
they had to control that and they had to put more into medicine.
Another part of the Health Care Act was to try to address this
thing of preexisting conditions. You know, there are people who,
and God forbid it happen to any of you all, you get a scare with
cancer, and if you have a gap in your insurance right now, you will
never get insurance. I have had people in my family in that situation. If they had $100,000 to pay for insurance they couldnt get it.
So I think we have to be careful when we are looking at this because there are parts of the bill that you might like and there are
other parts that you might not like, but I think, again, we have to
be careful, well, again, we are trying to bring down the costs so
that people will stay well, because we are going to pay one way or
another.
I realize I have run out of time, but thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. GOWDY. I thank the gentleman from Maryland.
The Chair would now recognize the distinguished gentleman
from Arizona, Dr. Gosar.
Mr. GOSAR. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I am a health care provider, I am a dentist, and I am a small
businessman, so there is theory and then there is application. So
a lot of things look great on paper, and I know every single one
of you hear it in your board meetings every day. But then there
comes the reality of how does it actually be implicated.
Mr. Gardiner, I know you cite a model, you show that the small
businesses actually benefit from government takeover health care.
I prefer that term because I can tell you, and back that up, that
that is what it is. However, the model assumes much smaller
growth in health care costs, an assumption both the CBO and CMS
have rejected as being highly implausible. And I think we have
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seen a lot of that discussion and looking back at equations and
numbers making that.
Instead of relying on an academic model, and with faulty assumptions, how many businesses are you aware of that are enthusiastic about this health care plan?
Mr. GARDINER. Many. And we could have some of them call you
or write you, if you would like.
Mr. GOSAR. Oh, I would love to. Can you pull off a couple off the
top of your head?
Mr. GARDINER. Yes. I think some of them are cited in my written
testimony. I am just thinking of one right here in the greater metro
area, Mike Ray, with the Hobby Shop. He has come on his own and
testified.
Mr. GOSAR. How about something in Arizona? I dont like examples in the Beltway. How about something out in Arizona?
Mr. GARDINER. I dont have one off the top of my head in Arizona.
Mr. GOSAR. Mr. Brewer, do you think that you are real happy
with the assumptions based off what I just asked Mr. Gardiner?
Mr. BREWER. You mean the CBO assumptions?
Mr. GOSAR. Yes.
Mr. BREWER. No, not at all.
Mr. GOSAR. Is it going to create jobs?
Mr. BREWER. No. Everything that we see indicates the incentive
to a cattle drive to the exchanges.
Mr. GOSAR. Oh, I like that. Now, I am going to skip you for just
a second because I am coming back to you, okay?
Mr. Morey, how about you?
Mr. MOREY. I do not see the opportunity for job creation out of
this bill, no.
Mr. GOSAR. How about you, Mr. Payne?
Mr. PAYNE. None.
Mr. GOSAR. How about you, Mr. Puzder?
Mr. PUZDER. It is a job killer, it is not a job creator.
Mr. GOSAR. So my colleague on the other side talked about the
administrative costs. Mr. Puzder, tell me where the administrative
costs many times are linked, is it in less government regulations
or more?
Mr. PUZDER. Less government regulation will drive down administrative costs.
Mr. GOSAR. Thank you.
Mr. Payne.
Mr. PAYNE. Same thing. Regulation costs a lot of money.
Mr. GOSAR. Mr. Morey.
Mr. MOREY. I would echo those comments.
Mr. GOSAR. How about you, Mr. Brewer?
Mr. BREWER. Certainly.
Mr. GOSAR. I am not being disrespectful, because I have something special for you. [Laughter.]
Mr. Gardiner.
Mr. GARDINER. Less is more.
Mr. GOSAR. Okay. I love that.
So my colleagues on our side have been talking about, or the opposite side, have been telling us that the Republicans have been
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never proposing any jobs, and what we are really trying to do is
get to the core matter of it. We are not trying to put a band aid
on it, we are trying to streamline the red tape.
Mr. Brewer, you made the comment of a cattle call. Okay?
Mr. BREWER. Cattle drive.
Mr. GOSAR. Cattle drive? Cattle call.
Mr. BREWER. They are different things. [Laughter.]
I am a Texas boy.
Mr. GOSAR. I am from Wyoming, so you use one to get to the
other.
Mr. BREWER. Yes.
Mr. GOSAR. So, Ms. Braden, you made some wonderful comments, and that is there is a responsibility. I am a believer we need
reform, but not the reform I saw. Okay? Because you hit it, and
that is there is personal accountability, personal responsibility.
And I do believe there was a little company in Iowa that actually
had a concept like this, if I am not mistaken, and what they basically did is they invested in the employee. And they said, listen, we
are going to make you see your family doctor, and that preventative service, whatever they come up with, we are going to give you
time during that workday to be able to do that, but you have to
stay on that preventative model.
And if I am not mistaken, then they made another caveat. They
said that as long as you stay on that caveat, we will pay 100 percent of your claims. They said if you fall off, you are going to pay
25 percent co; fall off again it is 50 percent co; fall off a third time,
it is 75 percent co; and so forth and so on. And guess what?
Ms. BRADEN. Everybody went to the doctor.
Mr. GOSAR. Everybody went to the doctor. And guess what? You
died with that company. What a job creation that was. Because
what happened is you had investment from the patient and the employer and the health care benefit, all the way across the board,
minimizing the red tape. So thank you very much for making sure
that we understood that we are not here about job stymieing, we
are here about building jobs and reducing red tape.
Thank you.
Mr. GOWDY. I thank the gentleman from Arizona.
The Chair would now recognize the distinguished gentleman
from Missouri, Mr. Clay.
Mr. CLAY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
And let me, too, welcome two of my friends, former colleague and
friend, the former Senator Jim Talent from my home State of Missouri. Thank you for being here. As well as my friend, Mr. Puzder,
who runs a significant operation out in Missouri. Thank you for
your testimony today.
Let me start out by saying that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is the law of the land, and it is a good law, and,
like any law, it could be improved. However, my colleagues on the
other side of the aisle are not interested in honestly examining the
positive and negative aspect of the law, and I think they are just
interested in repealing it; it is scoring a political victory over President Obama.
This health care reform law is good for Americans, it is good for
businesses, and especially small businesses. And it is very good for
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young businesses, which are actually the ones that create the most
jobs. And I am so glad to hear the phrase job creation; first time
I have heard it in over 6 months in this committee.
Some have raised concerns that businesses wont be able to afford compliance with the ACA. Ninety-eight percent of employers
will be exempt from the insurance mandate, and 95 percent of the
businesses that are not exempt already offer health insurance to
their employees. This misleading premise of this particular hearing
is that the ACA hurts so-called job creators.
Let me start with Mr. Gardiner. Thanks to the ACA, starting
this year, consumers will receive more value for their premium dollar because insurance companies will be required to spend 80 to 85
percent of premium dollars on medical care and health care quality
improvement, rather than on administrative costs. If they dont,
the insurance companies will be required to provide a rebate to
their customers starting in 2012. This provision is known as the
medical loss ratio.
Mr. Gardiner, do you believe that the combination of the medical
loss ratio requirements and the shop exchanges will make it easier
for employers to offer quality affordable health insurance to their
employees?
Mr. GARDINER. In terms of the MLR, we have looked at the data.
There are a lot of States before the ACA passed and currently were
under those rates in those States already, and the world didnt
come to an end. So we just see it as this means it is feasible for
insurance companies in other States to do it, and the 22 million
self-employed who buy insurance today in the individual market
are certainly going to be protected, the 4.8 million companies that
have under 10 employees, who are paying a lot more for insurance
than other businesses that have more than 10 employees, are going
to benefit from this too because they are in the small group market.
And we think the exchanges are really the critical part for putting small businesses on a level playing field; they dont have the
option to really be self-insured if you are 10, 20 employees, 50,
where the bulk of small businesses are. And these exchanges can
work and they have been proven to work, and we think that is
going to be the driving force for making it more available and more
affordable for small business.
Mr. CLAY. Thank you so much for that response.
Mr. Puzder, I have heard your concerns about providing the nutritional information for the products that you sell. Other than that
requirement, do you think that this law will help shave cost on
health care for your employees? And when I say shave costs, will
it help reduce the cost of prescription medicine? Will it make the
delivery of health care more efficient for your employees?
Mr. PUZDER. I dont believe that it will. As I said early on, I am
not a health care expert. I can tell you how it impacts our company
from a financial perspective, but right now, I went into our restaurants when the health care debate was going on and I said to
some of the employees, why do so few of you buy this insurance
that we offer that is so inexpensive, and the response was, Mr.
Puzder, we get it for free at the emergency room. So I dont know
how much better they are going to do than free.
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Mr. CLAY. Well, that is why we are trying to connect people with
health care providers and to cut down the cost of people showing
up at the emergency room for a cold.
Mr. PUZDER. I agree with that. I think that the employee is not
going to be positively impacted, but there should be something
done to cut those emergency room costs. You have a very good
point there.
Mr. CLAY. Thank you.
I yield back.
Mr. GOWDY. I thank the gentleman from Missouri.
With the indulgence of our panel and my colleagues on both
sides, we would like to have a second round, which we sometimes
refer to as a lightening round. My colleagues do not need to feel
the need to take their full 5 minutes if they dont want to, but I
will start with the distinguished gentleman from Tennessee, Dr.
DesJarlais.
Mr. DESJARLAIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Mr.
Clay, for shortening the term to HCA or Health Care Act, and
dropping the Affordable. That is a little easier for me to pallet. But
you mentioned that this bill was brought about and it is the law
of the land, and you are glad to hear us mention job creation; and
I think we are all here today talking about the detriments to job
creation, and I think that point has been very strongly made.
In terms of the last question on shaving cost, I worry more, as
a physician, about shaving quality because we are trying to increase the number of people into a health care market with really
no means to pay for it. But that is not entirely true because our
friends on the other side of the aisle believe that Obamacares
taxes, which includes the employer mandate tax penalty, an increase in the Medicare Part A tax, a new tax on investment income, a new tax on health insurance providers, a new tax on drug
manufacturers, and a new tax on medical device manufacturers are
paid by firms out of their massive profit buckets. Moreover, they
believe taxes only impact the top 2 percent of taxpayers.
Based on your experience, is this a fair portrait of reality? And
I will just open that to whoever would like to grab it.
Mr. BREWER. No, it is not. There is no way you add all those
taxes in and reduce the cost to health care, period.
Mr. PUZDER. Mr. Cummings had mentioned how his firm had
been profitable, Congressman Cummings, how his firm had been
profitable and they gave those profits into paying for insurance. I
think part of what we are all saying here is we can take those profits and put them into insurance, but if we do that we cant invest
them to grow our businesses and create jobs.
So we are not really in conflict on that, but you cantlike I said,
there is no corporate pot of gold to go to to pay for this stuff; we
have to take it from someplace, and it is going to come from growth
and job creation.
Mr. DESJARLAIS. So again, as you stated, it is a job killer.
Mr. PUZDER. A job killer.
Mr. DESJARLAIS. Does the rest of the panel, for the most part,
agree with that?
Mr. GARDINER. I think part of the solution of getting more dollars
in the system is that everyone, as has been talked about here,
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every citizen has to be responsible, and I think that is why there
was an individual mandate put in. You cant have a bunch of people who dont pay, but yet can show up and get coverage and doing
what people are talking about here. So I dont think anybody has
ever looked at this and said that you could have a sustainable
health care system and not have everybody in the system and everybody paying their fair share.
Mr. DESJARLAIS. So basically forced health care?
Mr. GARDINER. I dont think you can have a system with freebies.
It doesnt work.
Mr. DESJARLAIS. There has always been a big debate about exactly who was uninsured in this country. Now, I heard numbers
early on that there was 30 million uninsured. We have asked people to define who those 30 million were; apparently up to half may
have been here illegally and not eligible for health care, perhaps
half of the remaining 15 million are folks that would qualify for
Medicare but just havent signed up, and then the other half are
some of the workers that are young and bulletproof and just opt
not to have health insurance.
So, in essence, this new law of the land that was imposed upon
people against their will, and clearly the majority of people in this
country still do not want this, is what we are stuck with at this
point, and I think that is why we are having hearings to show the
detriment of this health care law and what it is going to do to impact the economy and yet not really resolve the health care problem. It was a poorly conceived, it was passed in the middle of the
night, and people maybe have forgotten about how that occurred,
but lets get back to some more questions.
Mr. Puzder, did Hardees need a government mandate to add salads to its menu?
Mr. PUZDER. No. Actually, at Carls Jr. we have had salads since
the 1970s; used to have salad bars.
Mr. DESJARLAIS. A government mandate to add turkey burgers?
Mr. PUZDER. No, not at all. They tested well and sold well.
Mr. DESJARLAIS. Okay. So you have managed to do things to
help keep people healthy without government mandates.
Mr. PUZDER. We love it if people buy healthy products; we are
happy to sell them.
Mr. DESJARLAIS. Right. So now Federal mandates of sign
changes to help people understand what it is they are buying, do
you think that is going to impact their habits or do people just kind
of do what they want?
Mr. PUZDER. No, I dont think it is other thanwell, there have
been a number of studies on this, and I have included in my written testimony that show that, in fact, that has no impact on peoples eating habits. In fact, anecdotally, we have noticed, in some
of the restaurants where there is already menu labeling required,
people think that fast food has more calories than it does, and they
actually end up ordering higher calorie products once they see what
the caloric content actually is. So it has been a very interesting experiment so far that clearly hasnt worked.
Mr. DESJARLAIS. My time is up. I yield back.
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Mr. GOWDY. I thank the gentleman from Tennessee, would now
recognize the gentleman from Illinois, the ranking member of the
subcommittee, Mr. Davis.
Mr. DAVIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I was thinking,
when you walk into my home, my wife has a sign that says, welcome to the Davis Household, and then it says, Please know that
the opinion of the husband is not necessarily that of management.
[Laughter.]
And I am so pleased that opinions dont necessarily manage what
we do all of the time. I am amazed at some of the things that I
hear. Job killer? If you create an opportunity for more than 30 million people in this country to have health insurance and go to the
doctor on a regular basis, and stay out of the emergency rooms of
hospitals, and to live longer, the only business that I could see that
gets hurt by this is the undertaker. And he doesnt get hurt too
much because eventually he is going to get you anyway; I mean,
it takes a little bit longer.
Could someone please share with me how creating opportunity
for 30 million people, over 30 million to get decent health care that
creates the need over the next 10 or 15 years for 150,000 additional
doctors, more than 250,000 nurses, could someone tell me how that
kills jobs?
Mr. PUZDER. I think I can, Congressman. Lets just assume that
there is this benefit as you have outlaid it, and I dont know if it
is a health care benefit or a health insurance benefit, because I
think the law requires health insurance; they already get health
care.
But lets just talk about the health insurance benefit. Benefits
have costs. The money to pay for those benefits has to come from
somewhere. Our business makes a profit. All of that profit is reinvested in the business. When the profit is reduced, you invest less
in the business. If the profit is eliminated, you have nothing to invest in the business. If you dont have anything to invest, you cant
grow and you cant create jobs.
So there is a benefit, and I am not here to argue about that. I
just want you to know that there is a cost associated with the benefit, and I think the businesses that are at this table here are telling you in some instances it might put them out of business.
Mr. DAVIS. But if I am dead because I couldnt get health care,
can I come to your business?
Mr. BREWER. No, but there will be somebody to replace him. Congressman, your passion is evident and commendable, and your conviction is commendable, but he is right. Anything you do that
erodes profits in an organization, impedes their ability to create
jobs. And right alongside the cost implications of the Affordable
Care Act are the administrative complexities that makes it easier
for an employer just to throw up their hands and say, heck, I am
out; lets send these folks to the exchanges and then they can be
subsidized by the taxpayers.
I am all for everybody having health care. I totally agree with
you on that. I think we disagree fundamentally on how you get
there.
Mr. DAVIS. But, see, I think that the realities are if you even just
deal with the question of fairness, if you ask a bird is it fair for
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birds to eat worms, and you turn around and ask the worm the
same question, chances are you are going to get a different answer.
So if you ask the thousands of employees in my congressional district who provide health care for people all over the world if somehow or another their ability to provide these services will drive
down jobs or take away jobs, they would probably disagree vehemently.
Mr. BREWER. I am sorry, that is not what our survey results tell
us.
Mr. DAVIS. They would disagree. Well, ask the 21 hospital administrators in my congressional district if they would agree.
Mr. GARDINER. Congressman Davis, there is another impact aspect of job creation, and that relates to job lock, and job lock has
two impacts: one, employees at a company who dont want to leave
because they go somewhere else, maybe they wouldnt have health
coverage and it is very vital for they and their family members; the
other is who is going to start those new companies.
And those are people in the work force working at a job, and they
go through this same system, and the harder it is for them to see
their way to go out and launch in the first step, to be a self-employed person, to found a company, and they cant get benefits for
them and their family and they are a responsible person, they are
going to stick with their job.
So it is more complicated than just surveying existing companies.
There is a whole bunch of other factors about who starts businesses
and how they grow at the bottom.
Mr. DAVIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I certainly
agree in terms of our health delivery system, we have much more
of a sickness care system than we do a health care system, so I
would certainly agree with you, Ms. Braden, on that point, and I
yield back.
Mr. GOWDY. I thank the gentleman from Illinois.
The Chair would now recognize the gentleman from Arizona, Dr.
Gosar.
Mr. GOSAR. My colleague, Mr. Davis, really brings it forthright.
First of all, life isnt fair, never has, never will be. If you are a business, you should never complain about a profit. That is what you
should do; that is what has to happen in order to create jobs and
to have the ability to employ more.
The other thing that we have to look at is when government impedes itself or impugns itself into any type of parts of our life, to
the degradation of that industry, we see it flounder. Give you a
good example. You dont have to look very far with government intrusion in health care to look at the Native Americans. Boy, there
is a great unemployment rate there, 60 percent at the Navajo Nation, 75 percent in the Apache reservation, all because of dictations
by government.
And why do I bring that up? Well, because this program is based
on a flawed system that flawed it from the very get-go, as it demanded that you had to go to the emergency room; you couldnt
turn anybody away. You couldnt even ask the questions where are
you from, how do you look. You couldnt turn them away.
So what we have done is we have restricted care, and medicine
did that. I am happy to say I am from dentistry. We never went
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down that road. And the reason I say that is that today, for every
dollar spent in dentistry, 50 percent comes out of the patients
pocket. So they have risk. They find value. That is why you see lots
of dentists. Of course, we are not doing so good right now because
we dont have a good economy, but there is something inherently
right about that.
So I kind of want to continue that by saying in 2014 employers
who employ at least 50 person full-time employees will face a penalty for failing to provide minimum essential coverage. How is this
going to affect businesses specifically in respect to hiring? Mr.
Brewer.
Mr. BREWER. Well, people who have 49 employees are going to
keep 49. I think there is a fair number of our survey respondents
that suggested that they would go to more part-time employees so
they wouldnt have to offer coverage. There is no way that helps
in their hiring practice.
Mr. GOSAR. So what we are doing is we are cost-shifting again;
we are making it go back to the government so that the government is going to have to streamline them, just like they did in the
Medicare roles, where what we did is we look at the equations and
we take away certain benefits so that we set them on Medicaid.
This whole system is based on a flawed system; it doesnt work
anywhere along the line for job creation.
Ms. Braden.
Ms. BRADEN. If you really look at what the cost of health care
is to an employer, there is not one employer sitting here that can
tell you that it costs less than $3,000, which is the fine, per year.
Every one of us pays, on an individual basis, pays more than
$3,000 for our health care for our employees per year. So now we
have a fine that is less than what we are currently paying. It
doesnt take a rocket scientist to figure out what we are going to
do.
Mr. GOSAR. And let me ask you the next thing. You talked about
the administrative costs. A lot of that administrative cost, is it not
true, that it has to do with tort?
Ms. BRADEN. Yes.
Mr. GOSAR. And did you see anything in this bill, any one of you,
do you see anything about tort reform in this bill? In fact, it was
refused. I wonder why. I guess I am a dentist, not an attorney.
That is where the American people need to stand up and businesses need to stand up.
Mr. Morey, how do you see this is going to affect those people,
those businesses that are under 50 jobs?
Mr. MOREY. I see it very much the same way. I would like to
mention that the issue of tort reform, to me, is gigantic.
Mr. GOSAR. Paramount, right?
Mr. MOREY. I would like it to go beyond medical, into general
tort reform, if possible, from our business perspective as well. But
ultimately we want to employ people; we want to provide them
great coverage. We just dont want mandates shoved down our
throat in how to do it. And ultimately I think that the free enterprise system does a pretty good job. The marketplace does a pretty
good job of attracting; the better employers attract better staff
members. The marketplace does work.
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Mr. GOSAR. Mr. Puzder, you really drive my attention because
equations. You know, when you are in business, you are looking at
all the parameters and what possibly could do. Have you run all
the numbers? Are you comfortable with all the numbers based
upon this bill and how it is going to impugn job creation?
Mr. PUZDER. No, Congressman. In fact, we hired an expert in
this area, Mercer. They are one of the national experts on health
care costs, and while their best estimate is that our health care
costs will increase $18 million, which is that 150 percent, the range
runs from $7.3 million to $35.1 million. Now, I have to tell you in
any other aspect of my business, if one of the people who works for
me came to me with an estimate that ran from $7 to $35 million,
I would tell them to go back and sharpen their pencils. But nobody
can figure it out.
Mr. GOSAR. One last question, just a quick indulgence.
If you have a program in your business that is failing, what do
you do?
Mr. PUZDER. Terminate it, replace it, try and figure out what the
next best thing is.
Mr. GOSAR. That is exactly what this law is, and it should be terminated. We should have the guts to say that. Thank you.
Mr. GOWDY. I thank the gentleman from Arizona and would now
recognize the ranking member of the full committee, the gentleman
from Maryland, Mr. Cummings.
Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much.
I want to just reference something that Dr. Gosar said, and I was
meeting with staff and I may have missed it, so correct me if I am
wrong, that he was glad that dentists can turn away people, unlike
emergency rooms; dental care people pay 50 percent, an average of
calls, and they have some skin in the game. Is that accurate? I will
yield to the gentleman.
Mr. GOSAR. Did I say that?
Mr. CUMMINGS. I am just asking you what did you say about it
is okay?
Mr. GOSAR. [Remarks made off mic.]
Mr. CUMMINGS. I just wanted to say that I spend a phenomenal
amount of my time working on my case called the Deamonte Driver
case. This was a 12-year-old boy who had a tooth infection, he was
on Medicaid, and he couldnt find a dentist because he was being
turned away. Twelve years old. And this was 3 years ago. So because a dentist would not accept him, and this was in Maryland,
my State, the infection from an $80 tooth decay problem, it would
cost $80 to treat it, he died. Twelve years old. Because a dentist
turned him away. And they spent $250,000 trying to save his life
at the end.
So, I guess with regard to dental care and care, period, I just say
that our country is better than that. We are better than that.
And I understand, believe me, to all of you, I understand what
you are saying. I understand it is hard being in business. For you
all who have your own businesses, a lot of people dont realize what
you go through. They dont realize all the folks you have to deal
with; the IRS, you have to deal with making sure the lights are on,
you have to make sure, if you have grass, you have to make sure
the grass is cut, everything. You have to pay for every toothpick,
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every pen, every pencil; you have to make sure employees are okay;
you have to deal with absenteeism. You have to deal with all kinds
of stuff.
But at the same time I think that we have to also balance that.
If we are talking about our people, people, of course, are who make
our businesses go, and if they are not healthy, that is a problem.
That is a real big problem. And there are those who may not see
health care as a right, I still happen to think so, but I do believe
that when we get to a point where we feel that it is okay to, if I
am a skilled lawyer and somebody comes in to me and they have
a problem, but that is a little different because I am not talking
about life and death. That is different.
But if I have a skill and like the doctors in my State, not in Arizona, but in my State, who turned this little boy away, and I am
talking about a whole lot of them turned him away, and you die
at 12, I dont know how many of you have children, but if you have
a child who dies at 12, you dont forget it. So what we have done
is spent a lot of time, I spend a phenomenal amount of my time
trying to make sure that that never happens to another child in
our State again. As a matter of fact, because of Diamonte Driver,
we have now been able to take Maryland from one of the worst
States with regard to having dentists work with kids on Medicaid
to one of the top, I think it is even number one or number two, in
a matter of 2 or 3 years.
So the reason why I mention that is because my staff had mentioned to me, like I said, I was with a staff member, that that
statement was made, and maybe I misunderstood it or misquoted
it, I am sorry I didnt hear it, but I just want to make it clear that
there is something that I think should always be above profit, and
that is life, health and safety; and I think that is what the Affordable Care Act was about and is about. And as somebody said a little bit earlier, no, it is not perfect, but a lot of its imperfections
were because of people trying to satisfy both sides of the aisle to
get a decent bill, and it did not come out perfect. It is not a product, it is a project; that means it can ever get better.
So, with that, I yield back.
Mr. GOWDY. I thank the gentleman from Maryland.
My father is a physician. The only two things that kept me from
following in his footsteps were math and science. If it werent for
those two, I might have become one as well. And I was sitting here
while Mr. Cummings was talking, who is one of the most eloquent
Members of Congress and somebody that I have a lot of personal
affection for. I remember always being the last ones to leave church
because folks wanted to ask my dad questions. I remember holidays being interrupted.
But the thing I remember the very most are the people who
would call at night and say my kid has been sick all day, can you
come see him tonight? That is frustrating, when somebody has
been sick all day, why you didnt take advantage of the office
hours? Why you waited until the evening. And my mom would say
why dont you charge more? And he never would do it.
So my question to you all is what is the role of personal responsibility in our health care system? Do we incentivize the right conduct? And we have all these different models from what we have
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now to what is perceived as radical, which is decoupling health insurance from employment. It is perceived as radical, but that is the
way we existed.
Up until 1944 we didnt get our health insurance from our employer; we got it ourselves. I am not smart enough to know the difference between a right and a privilege; I just know this: personal
responsibility has to be part of the equation or we are not going
to make it as a Republic.
So I would ask you this, in conclusion, and I will let you go from
left to right, give you all the last word, although we only have
about 3 minutes, so apportion it accordingly. What is the role of
personal responsibility and how can our country better incentivize
the right conduct and penalize the wrong conduct in our health
care system?
Mr. PUZDER. When you said right to left, does that mean you are
starting with me? That was your right or my right?
Mr. GOWDY. Your right to left, my left to right. I always like to
start on the right.
Mr. PUZDER. Okay, I guess it is me. I think private enterprise
and State governments are the best place to make determinations
as to health care. I think there are many things that the Federal
Government could do that would contribute to a better health care
system. I dont know if health care is a right or not, Congressman,
but I know it is the law. I know an emergency room cannot turn
you away. What we are talking about here is health insurance, not
health care. Health care people get now. This is why they dont
take up our offer on health insurance when we offer to pay even
60 percent. They are getting health care. This is about health insurance and how you allocate those costs. The way they are allocated now, they will destroy our ability to create jobs and prosper.
That doesnt mean that profits will go down, but profits are what
we reinvest to grow. And if we cant reinvest to grow, we cant create jobs and we cant create prosperity, which is what American
business has done for over 200 years.
Mr. GOWDY. Mr. Payne.
Mr. PAYNE. I agree with that completely. I think there is some
personal responsibility that has to go into the medical cost. I agree
with the skin in the game program. Years ago, programs that I was
in, you had to pay for the coverage, turn it in and get reimbursed.
Well, I understand people may not have money to pay to start
with. In our districts, every plant that I have I have gone around
and checked, our people get medical coverage, it is there. Our property taxes, everything is paying for it already. I havent had a single complaint of a person in our organization that comes back to
us and says, hey, we have an employer or somebody in their family
that has a serious problem; we dont have that problem at all.
It is not a question of whether people have the right to have the
insurance or the coverage. Everybody wants that for them, there is
no question. It is where does the cost lie. In our company, it is
throwing all the cost to the employer to pay these new expenses,
and where does that cash come from? It is a big burden on companies in the middle, on all companies, I suspect, but certainly on our
company it is a burden that is bigger than we have. That is the
problem.
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Mr. GOWDY. I have 45 seconds left to split between four of you.
Mr. MOREY. Yes. We provide $100 incentive for folks to go get
a physical. That is cover-to-cover in the program. We provide a
smoking cessation program that is for both the staff member and
for their spouse. These are the kind of things we do to try to help
people help themselves. That is where I think much of that responsibility lies and that is on the individual person.
Ms. BRADEN. When I look at it, it can go so much farther, and
we all have a story, and I respect that, because I have them just
in my practice alone, with people that were offered health care and
health insurance, and didnt take it. That is a private decision.
What exactly is our responsibility and does the government regulate it? I am not sure. I think if these guys really looked at their
businesses, they would say that the reason they offer the wellness
that they do is because they know it improves their work force and
they get more out of it.
If we really wanted to look at health care, we would start with
dentistry and we would say, if you dont have your teeth cleaned
twice a year, you are not entitled to basic and major dental, because everything starts in the mouth. So we are looking at health
care and we are looking at wellness and we are looking at health
insurance, three different things.
Mr. GOWDY. Mr. Brewer.
Mr. BREWER. One of the things that ACA did get right was increasing the opportunity for employers to incent people to well behavior. We have a pretty sophisticated practice in our firm of helping clients design programs that incent people to live healthier lifestyles and make better lifestyle decisions. So in this morass of
things that we dont like in ACA, certainly that aspect of it was
welcome.
Mr. GARDINER. I think there are three things I will mention. One
is I think you have to have an individual mandate so everybody
pays their fair share and gets coverage. I think employees need to
know the total cost of insurance, including what the employers are
paying. Most of the time they dont realize how much it really
costs.
And we have seen in all our surveys and meetings with small
businesses, where 42 percent of Americans work, that small businesses would like wellness and prevention programs that fit small
business, and they dont have access. We hope that it changes; run
by States can do this. And I agree that dentistry has some good
models. I know I dont have to pay any copay if I get in there, and
I think that is a good incentive and it has been proven to work.
Mr. GOSAR [presiding]. Well, on behalf of the chairman, I would
like to thank you very much for your indulgence for two rounds,
and thank you so very, very much. Thank you.
Our meeting is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 12:03 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
[Additional information submitted for the hearing record follows:]
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