Baucus 'sells' health care to business owners

Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., was in Kalispell Tuesday, touting health-care legislation that just cleared Congress, but conceding that implementing the bill will be a work in progress with down sides that will have to be addressed.

“Some is going to turn out better than expected, some is going to turn out worse than expected,” he told a group of about two dozen business professionals invited by his staff for a roundtable meeting at the Kalispell Chamber of Commerce building.

Baucus predicted there would be many Senate oversight hearings to address any problems that develop as the 2,000-plus page bill is enacted over the next few years.

While he covered many aspects of the legislation, Baucus initially concentrated on how it would impact small business.

“We are a small-business state,” he said, noting that the Flathead Valley alone has 4,300 small businesses. Most of the state’s small businesses currently do not offer employees insurance programs.

“The main reason [business owners] can’t offer insurance is they can’t afford it,” he said.

The bill provides $40 billion in tax credits for businesses with fewer than 25 employees to provide an incentive for purchasing insurance. Baucus stressed that businesses with fewer than 50 employees will not be required to purchase insurance.

By 2014, however, the bill will create Health Insurance Exchanges operated by the states, offering a variety of plans. Also in 2014, individuals will be mandated to purchase health insurance.

Baucus explained that once the tax credit and insurance reform provisions are in place, it is projected that premium increases will begin to level off, making insurance more affordable for businesses and individuals.

Curbing the rising costs of health-insurance plans is one of the bill’s main objectives, Baucus said.

Dave Harvey of Sportsman & Ski Haus said the business has more than 50 employees, so it will not qualify for tax credits, and it is faced with an insurance cost increase of more than 13 percent this year. He said he is concerned that the business may be faced with steeper increases in coming years.

Baucus said the bill currently has no protections against excessive increases over the next couple of years, and it could not be amended to provide those protections because of the “reconciliation” process used for final passage in the Senate. However, Baucus said Congress can address that issue in the future.

“I’m quite confident that will be addressed over the next two years,” he said.

Harvey said he is hopeful that the bill will indeed curb Sportsman’s health-insurance cost increases.

“I’m encouraged to have some light at the end of the tunnel, compared to the alternative” of perpetually increasing insurance costs, Harvey said.

Kalispell businessman Gordon Pirrie asked Baucus about the absence of medical-lawsuit reform measures in the bill.

“What are you going to do about tort reform? ... Something has to be done,” Pirrie said.

Baucus said he agrees, but downplayed the benefits.

“It’s helpful, but I also think it’s not quite as helpful as people think it is,” he said.

Tort-reform advocates contend that most congressional Democrats do not support reform because they are supported by trial lawyers, and maintain that “defensive medicine” practices used by doctors to avoid being sued contribute considerably to the overall cost of health care.

Baucus was asked if the bill provides any kind of benefits to illegal aliens. He said it does not, but at the same time it does not address the existing cost problems caused by illegal aliens using the medical system, particularly in border states.

“That’s a problem we have to deal with,” he said.

No one at the meeting raised the main issues behind Republican opposition to the bill — that it is a new entitlement program that will lead to an overall expansion of government, with considerable costs and taxes necessary to pay for it. Nor did anyone address the constitutional issues raised in lawsuits against the new law.

Baucus said he is “distressed” that no Republicans supported the bill in the end, but he believes that opposition was based on political rather than substantive reasons.

“My honest view is that the Republican Party made a calculated decision to tear this apart” for political gain in upcoming elections, Baucus said.

A group of mostly Republican state attorneys general are challenging the bill with lawsuits, and that is an extension of ongoing partisan opposition to the bill, Baucus said.

This week, Montana Republican legislators wrote to Gov. Brian Schweitzer, requesting an analysis of the bill’s fiscal impact on the state. It is estimated that the bill will add as many as 100,000 people to the state Medicaid program.

Baucus addressed the issue at the meeting, conceding that it will have some impacts. But for the first two years, the federal government will cover 100 percent of the cost of new program participants, and after that, it will cover no less than 90 percent of those costs.

Medicaid is the federally mandated program to provide health care for low-income citizens. It is managed by the states, but jointly funded by the states and the federal government.

Baucus, who is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, has taken considerable heat from Republicans nationally for comments he made in Senate debate last week that described the new health-care bill as “an income shift” to help the poor.

The senator, in those remarks, criticized “the mal-distribution of income in America” and said “the wealthy are getting way, way too wealthy and the middle income class is left behind.” He said the Democratic health-care reform “will have the effect of addressing that mal-distribution of income in America.”

Critics charge that Baucus’ comments amount to a tacit admission that the program is a kind of socialism, but no one brought the topic up at Tuesday’s session with invited guests.

Reporter Jim Mann may be reached at 758-4407 or by e-mail at jmann@dailyinterlake.com