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House leaders hope to bring H.R. 3798 — a package of measures related to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) employer health benefits requirements — to the floor for a vote sometime this week.
Members of the House Rules Committee plan to meet at 5 p.m. Wednesday to prepare the “Save American Workers of 2017″ package for the vote.
H.R. 3798 already appears on a House list of bills that could come to the floor this week.
The Affordable Care Act now requires what the ACA defines as “large employers” to provide full-time workers with affordable health coverage, with a minimum value, or else face the possibility of having to pay large fines.
The Rules Committee says it will be considering a version of H.R. 3798 that includes both the original text of H.R. 3798 and the original text of two other bills, H.R. 6718 and H.R. 4616. The new, expanded version of the bill would:
- Change the ACA employer coverage mandate threshold for “full-time employee” to 40 hours per week, from 30 hours per week.
- Keep the ACA employer coverage mandate from applying to any month beginning after Dec. 31, 2014, and before Jan. 1, 2019.
- Postpone the start date of the ACA excise tax on high-cost health benefits packages to Dec. 31, 2022, from the Dec. 31, 2021, start date now in effect.
- Repeal an ACA excise tax on indoor tanning services.
- Require employers to provide Form 1095 coverage statements to individuals only when individuals ask for the statements, instead of having to send the statements to all employees, recently departed employees and certain dependents every year.
The text of the bill, the Rules Committee meeting notice and the materials on the House floor action documents site do not say whether, or how, Congress would try to offset the effects of the bill on federal tax revenue.
Drafters could look to provisions cut from earlier tax and spending bills for ideas. In November 2017, for example, an early version of the legislation that became the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act included a provision that would have eliminated the medical expense deduction.
Resources
Links to a wide range of information about H.R. 3798 are available here, on the Congress.gove website.
The latest information about the version of the bill the House Rules Committee is considering is available here. The House Rules Committee streams its meetings live on the web.
Washington appears to be in the path of Hurricane Florence, and it's possible that the storm, or other events, could disrupt congressional activity this week.
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Allison Bell
Allison Bell, a senior reporter at ThinkAdvisor and BenefitsPRO, previously was an associate editor at National Underwriter Life & Health. She has a bachelor's degree in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and a master's degree in journalism from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She can be reached through X at @Think_Allison.
