UPDATE: Hirono Amendment:

Hirono Amendment Exempts
Hawaii’s Prepaid Health Care Act from H.R. 3962

In 1974, the State of Hawaii enacted the Prepaid Health Care Act (PHCA). This law requires that employers
provide health care coverage to employees who work at least 20 hours a week for 4 consecutive weeks.
Hawaii consistently ranks among the highest states in terms of insurance coverage and lowest in regard to the number of uninsured. This is largely due to PHCA. Private and public health insurance cover an estimated 92% of our population of 1.3 million people. Of those with private insurance, 93% are covered through employment-based plans.

The Hirono Amendment would exempt PHCA, the first and only employer mandate law of its kind in our country, from H.R. 3962, the House health care reform bill.
• The Hirono Amendment was adopted by voice vote by the House Education and Labor Committee on
July 16, 2009.

• Debate on the amendment was contentious, but in the end PHCA was acknowledged by members of
the Committee as being superior in benefits and coverage in comparison to the employer mandated
insurance provisions contained in health reform bill.

How the employer mandate in H.R. 3962 differs from PHCA:

Under H.R. 3962, employers would be given a choice of either offering their employees health insurance or pay 8% of their payroll for their employees to enter the health exchange.

Under H.R. 3962 employers contribute a minimum of 72.5% of the cost of the health insurance premium for an individual and 65% of the cost of a family premium. PHCA applies only to individual health insurance coverage for full-time workers. The law requires employers to contribute at least 50% of the premium cost for single coverage, and the employee must contribute the balance, provided the employee’s share does not exceed 1.5% of his or her wages. Because of the 1.5% individual payment cap, Hawaii employers on average pay 94% of the premium with many paying 100%.

Hirono Amendment Exempts Hawaii’s Prepaid Health Care Act from H.R. 3962
5-104 Prince Kuhio Federal Building 300 Ala Moana Boulevard Honolulu, Hawai’i 96850 (808) 541-1986 www.hirono.house.gov

• The Hirono Amendment provides maximum flexibility for the State in regard to national health care reform. Under the Hirono Amendment, the State will work with the newly established Office of the Health Choices Commissioner in determining how Hawaii’s law will work within the national framework.

• Hawaii is able to determine for itself, on its own terms, how it wishes to proceed with choices of a national plan or continuance of PHCA. For example, if the State determines that it would be more advantageous to participate fully in the national law, it could repeal PHCA.

• The amendment exempts PHCA from H.R. 3962, but it does not exempt the State of Hawaii from the bill. This would, among other things, include health insurance coverage for Hawaii’s uninsured, a group that includes part-time workers.

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Hawaii gets to keep their antiquated mandatory medical insurance system and protect the very few insurance companies that are allowed to do business here AT the expense of the regular Americans that live here.  What a surprise coming from the moonbat paradise driven by democrats that have been at the trough so long they don’t even remember what it is like to be inside these islands’ economies.

Employer mandated medical coverage IS the reason I lost my job of 4 years.  My former employer had to cut his overhead, and mandatory medical benefits without the opportunity to shop more than 3 or 4 companies is his #1 financial liability.  Two years ago, my former employer had 27 employees; now he has 3, and he is still paying thousands each month for mandated health care coverage for those employees.

National health reform bills would exempt Hawaii

National health reform bills in the U.S. Senate and House would exempt Hawaii, protecting the state’s 35-year-old Prepaid Healthcare Act, which has led to one of the lowest uninsured rates in the country and low premiums for workers.

Do not believe the “low premiums for workers” line.  I spent years working full time in the restaurant industry turning over both my paychecks and a personal check to my employer each month to cover the cost of my son.  I was literally “working for tips”, and gambling each month that I would be able to make ends meet.

The Senate version preserves a waiver under the Federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act that allowed the state law, enacted Sept. 2, 1974. It requires businesses to provide health insurance to employees working more than 20 hours a week.

The provision to maintain the exemption, requested in the Senate draft by Hawaii’s Democratic U.S. Sens. Daniel K. Inouye and Daniel Akaka, “acknowledges that Hawaii is way ahead of the game in legislating employer-mandated health care,” said Jennifer Sabas, Hawaii chief of staff for Inouye.

“It ensures that whatever the final reform is, Hawaii would not be rolled back as it relates to employers providing health care, that as the national standard increases, Hawaii would move forward with that standard.”

U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie, Hawaii Democrat, said, “We have a waiver in the present (House) bill that if anything in the bill emerges that gives us less than what the Prepaid Health Care Act does in Hawaii, Hawaii law takes precedence. … Hawaii law will trump federal laws in terms of giving us an exemption or waiver, if any element is less than what we have in Hawaii today.”

The Prepaid Healthcare Act’s purpose, as described in a historical overview in 2004 by the Uninsured Project, was “to provide a certain degree of coverage and protection against the high costs of health care for those employees who do not have access to adequate health insurance coverage.”

But the law fixes employees’ share of the cost to no more than 1.5 percent of their annual wages. That has not changed since 1974, forcing employers to pay a larger share of rising health costs. Many have reduced the number of full-time workers to hold down their costs. (emphasis mine)

That 1.5 percent is just for an employee’s basic medical. The employer has the option of providing dental, vision, and drug options to the employee at either the employer’s cost or the employee’s cost.  Most employers do not cover that cost, and it runs in the hundreds per employee without dependents.

I would much rather have an opportunity to purchase personal healthcare for myself and my family across state lines, then lose my job again because my employer is trying to save his business.