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Senate Health Care Reform Amendments
The Senate is currently debating the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to revamp our nation’s health care system. Unfortunately the bill currently contains provisions that would have a negative impact our grocery stores being able to offer their long-term employees affordable and quality health insurance. The provisions would require companies to automatically enroll their employees into a health care plan within 30 days and also does not clearly define who is a full-time employee at a store.
For many employees, the supermarket industry is their entry or re-entry point into the workforce. We have a constantly changing workforce at entry level positions and are also reliant on seasonal employees. Without a 90-day grace period, the resources spent to cover employees who have no intention of staying with the company for an extended period of time will drastically increase the cost of benefits available to those who do stay.
FMI urges you to write your Senators and ask them to support amendments introduced by Senators Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and Maria Cantwell (D-WA). The amendments are:
- Landrieu Amendment – Extends the period to 90 days without penalty that employers have to enroll full-time employees into company health benefit plans to 90 days.
- Cantwell Amendment – Clarifies full-time work as 390 hours of service in a calendar quarter.
| Sample Letter for Campaign |
Subject: Support Cantwell and Landrieu Amendments
Dear [ Decision Maker ] ,
On behalf of my company, I am writing to ask for your support of two vital amendments being offered to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that will assist my company in continuing to offer competitive health care coverage.
Senator Mary Landrieu is offering an amendment that would extend the current 30 day waiting period for auto-enrollment in our company's health plan to a 90 day waiting period. This is an important change that reflects the unique demographics of the food retailing industry's workforce. Without a 90-day grace period, the resources spent to cover employees who have no intention of staying with the company for an extended period of time will drastically increase the cost of benefits available to those who do stay.
Senator Maria Cantwell's amendment will clarify that full-time employment is 390 hours in a quarter. The food retailing industry has a constantly changing workforce at entry level positions and is heavily reliant on seasonal employees. These short-time workers may be students home on summer break or individuals looking to make a little extra cash during the holiday season, but most have no intention of staying with the company for any length of time. Without Sen. Cantwell's clarification, there is the very real danger that we will have to expend significant resources to insure these individuals, adding to the costs of providing benefits for our full-time employees.
Food retailers and wholesalers require a combination of full-time and part-time workers to operate. We rely heavily on our associates to run our stores - these are not jobs that can be outsourced. The demographics of our employees include students, retirees and others with unique training or scheduling needs. We take great pride in offering our employees high-quality and affordable benefits, despite years of rising health insurance premiums that make these benefits increasingly expensive. But we need your help to make sure that we can control costs and cover as many of our employees as possible.
These two amendments are essential to this process and will help eliminate ambiguity in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act regarding who is considered full-time and ensure that we can continue to offer affordable and quality health care coverage to our employees that have shown a long term commitment to our company. We urge you to support both when they come up for a vote.
Thank you for your consideration in this matter. We welcome the opportunity to work with you during the amendment process to improve each of these areas and make changes we believe will improve this legislation and strengthen our ability as employers to provide quality, reasonably priced health care.
Sincerely,
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