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NRA to Congress: Full-steam ahead on Small Business Health Fairness Act

March 27, 2017

Although groups like the Consumers Union strongly oppose it, the National Restaurant Association today said it sent a letter to Congress giving its support to the Small Business Health Fairness Act. It believes the legislation will broaden access to medical care and lower the cost of employer-sponsored health plans.

The NRA's said as the "leading voice for American restaurateurs on ... health care law," it speaks for restaurant operators, who use health care benefits to attract, hire and retain employees. The group told Congress that under the Affordable Care Act, restaurant leaders and operators have spent many hours managing and delivering on the act's mandates with little to show for it in the way of improved coverage for workers.

"Alarmingly, the ACA requirements have often discouraged restaurants from expanding and limited the degree to which they can hire additional employees," the NRA said in the letter to Congress. "The Small Business Health Fairness Act will amend the current Department of Labor definition for Association  Health Plans … allowing small, independent restaurants to pool together across state lines through their membership in a trade or professional association, like the National Restaurant Association, to purchase health coverage for their employees and their families."

Further, the NRA said, such plans — sometimes referred to simply as AHPs — give smaller businesses like some restaurants, increased power to negotiate coverage discounts, while creating efficiencies in administering the plans and ridding businesses from benefit structures, which the NRA views as costly additions, according to its letter.

That's why the restaurant groups said the Act, if passed, would end up reducing costs for employees and increasing the value of the health care benefits provided. But numerous other groups with fewer business ownership interests have said that the Act's provision would, in fact, only hurt overall healthcare coverage nationally by bringing about a system that allows insufficient coverage, higher premiums for those who are ill and, according to the Consumers Union, "undermining state efforts to spread healthcare costs fairly across the population."

According to Congress.gov, there was one roll call vote last Wednesday in the House that failed 179 to 233. Last Thursday, the act was read twice in the Senate and referred to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. On Friday, the entire replacement plan put forward by Republicans to replace the Affordable Care Act went down without a vote, but this act would provide modifications to that plan by redefining some of the mandates around employer-provided coverage.

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