[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 156 (2010), Part 12]
[House]
[Page 17605]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




        GRANDFATHERING HEALTH PLANS AND 1099 REPORTING MANDATES

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Inslee). The Chair recognizes the 
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Stearns) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. STEARNS. Mr. Speaker, we are 8 months into the passage of the 
more than 2,000-page health care bill, and already we are beginning to 
see some of the problems that the new health care law brings with it.
  When Congress passed the massive health care bill, I said that it 
would lead to millions of Americans losing their current health care 
plan. I was so concerned about this happening that I offered an 
amendment to the bill in the Energy and Commerce Committee markup and 
at the Rules Committee to protect people's health care plans. It was a 
very simple amendment. It stated, ``Nothing in this act shall be 
construed to prevent or limit individuals from keeping their current 
health coverage.'' This amendment was voted down in committee, and the 
Rules Committee prevented it from being offered on the House floor 
during debate on the health care bill.

                              {time}  1240

  Fast forward now 6 months, and the Department of Health and Human 
Services has just issued the rules that govern grandfathered health 
care plans. These are health plans that existed before the passage of 
the ObamaCare and could continue to operate as they have without all 
the new costly mandates and regulation that the health czar will 
impose.
  Unfortunately, the rule governing grandfathered health plans is so 
restrictive that most of the current health plans will not qualify. 
Businesses will be forced to buy new health plans under the control of 
the Federal health czar.
  How many will lose their current health plan? Up to 80 percent of 
small businesses will be forced to buy new ObamaCare-approved health 
care plans. Up to 64 percent of large businesses health plans will be 
forced to buy the new ObamaCare approved health plans.
  Now, you may wonder, where do I get these numbers? It's in the 
regulations. HHS' regulation on grandfathered health plans clearly 
states that up to 80 percent of small businesses and up to 64 percent 
of large businesses will simply lose their current plans. They admit 
that it will force people out of their current health plans.
  Health care reform should be about giving consumers more options, 
more choices, not forcing them out of the plans they currently enjoy.
  Yet despite hurting small businesses for having health plans that do 
meet the high standards set by HHS, just this month the Obama 
administration recently gave waivers to organization health plans that 
do not meet the requirements of the health care plan law. These plans 
failed to meet the law's definition of minimal coverage.
  However, the Obama administration provided waivers to up to over 100 
organizations, many of them unions, who offered limited benefits health 
care plans that do not comply with the law. If the law is good, why do 
you need to provide exemptions from it?
  Another problem with ObamaCare is it will require all business-to-
business transactions over $600 annually to file a 1099 IRS form. This 
is a massive burden on small businesses. They will be forced--this will 
force millions of small businesses to track all their expenditures by 
vendors and require small businesses to obtain taxpayer information 
numbers from everyone they do business with.
  So, has Congress tried to fix this problem? No. In fact, Democrats 
have taken it a step further. The recently passed Small Business Act 
included a provision that would expand the 1099 reporting requirement 
even further to included expenditures on your rental property. This 
means that if you spend more than $600 over the course of a year with a 
handyman for repairs or improvement, you'll need to file a 1099 form.
  Imagine, if you work as a general contractor and regularly buy 
building materials from a hardware store, you'll need to issue the 
store a 1099 form. If you are a trucker and regularly buy gasoline from 
the same gas station, you'll need to issue that gas station a 1099 
form.
  It is simply wrong to require additional burdens on small businesses. 
Small businesses represent 99 percent of all employment firms. Small 
businesses employ just over half of all private sector employees and 44 
percent of total U.S. private sector payroll. Small businesses have 
generated 64 percent of the new net jobs over the past 15 years.
  Yet despite a massive recession and double digit unemployment, the 
administration is finding new ways to hurt small businesses and prevent 
job growth.
  Mr. Speaker, the new Republican majority will work to create jobs and 
not add more regulations and burdensome paperwork and, in fact, rescind 
these mandates.

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