The Price of a Minimum Wage?
July 28, 2006
The House is preparing for a last-minute vote today on a House leadership sponsored minimum wage bill. Weighted down with an Association Health Plans (AHPs) attachment and labor poison pills, the bill will likely hurt workers more than it will help them.
In the past two months, Representative Hoyer (D-MD) and Senator Kennedy (D-MA) have offered Congress prime opportunities for a serious consideration of the minimum wage. Congress has not increased the minimum wage since 1997. During this time, the economy has grown and profits have risen to record highs, making it very feasible for businesses to raise wages.
Nearly 15 million Americans, 70 percent of whom are workers 20 years and older, would benefit from a minimum wage increase. Almost 60 percent of these workers are women, 40 percent are people of color, and more than a third are the sole breadwinners for their families.
Americans overwhelmingly support an increase to the minimum wage. According to a recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Center, 86 percent of Americans favor raising the minimum wage, and 43 percent of Americans consider raising the minimum wage a top priority.
It is inexcusable for the House to offer legislation on this vital issue with contingencies that will harm the working Americans that it purports to help.
Association Health Plan legislation will increase premiums for most small businesses, reduce benefits for Americans who are shifted into AHP plans, and lead to an increase in the number of Americans without health insurance. Mercer estimates that four years after full implementation of AHP legislation, the number of uninsured workers and dependents in small firms would increase by more than 1 million individuals—an 8.5 percent increase.
Key consumer protections that would be wiped out for individuals who receive their coverage through these arrangements include:
AHPs represent a bad deal for consumers and a bad deal for businesses. For example:
AHPs Undermine Existing Benefit Guarantees. AHPs would be exempted from most current coverage requirements. Access to critical services such as cervical and colorectal cancer screening, contraceptive coverage, well-child care and mental health benefits could disappear.
AHPs Limit Patient Protections. AHPs would not need to abide by state-level consumer protections, including access to specialty care, access to clinical trials, and the right to independent, external review of denied claims.
AHPs would increase premiums for most small businesses. The majority of small businesses would experience increased premiums under AHP legislation. These premium increases could affect more than 20 million employees and dependents.
AHPs could charge high and discriminatory premiums. Plans would be able to charge unlimited premiums based on age, gender and geography. AHPs could also charge higher premiums to members who have become older and sicker over time.
Attached flextime labor legislation frees employers from rules that mandate a 40-hour work week. Over the past decade, repeated attempts to pass such legislation have failed due to strong opposition from workers and labor unions who claim that flextime legislation will deny millions of workers overtime pay
Any minimum wage legislation that takes steps backwards in gaining healthcare and labor protections for American workers moves us farther away from progress. Even with, 83 percent of Americans support a two dollar increase to the minimum wage. Yet if this comes at the cost of losing overtime wages and healthcare, Congress has not done justice to working Americans.
July 28, 2006
The House is preparing for a last-minute vote today on a House leadership sponsored minimum wage bill. Weighted down with an Association Health Plans (AHPs) attachment and labor poison pills, the bill will likely hurt workers more than it will help them.
In the past two months, Representative Hoyer (D-MD) and Senator Kennedy (D-MA) have offered Congress prime opportunities for a serious consideration of the minimum wage. Congress has not increased the minimum wage since 1997. During this time, the economy has grown and profits have risen to record highs, making it very feasible for businesses to raise wages.
Nearly 15 million Americans, 70 percent of whom are workers 20 years and older, would benefit from a minimum wage increase. Almost 60 percent of these workers are women, 40 percent are people of color, and more than a third are the sole breadwinners for their families.
Americans overwhelmingly support an increase to the minimum wage. According to a recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Center, 86 percent of Americans favor raising the minimum wage, and 43 percent of Americans consider raising the minimum wage a top priority.
It is inexcusable for the House to offer legislation on this vital issue with contingencies that will harm the working Americans that it purports to help.
Association Health Plan legislation will increase premiums for most small businesses, reduce benefits for Americans who are shifted into AHP plans, and lead to an increase in the number of Americans without health insurance. Mercer estimates that four years after full implementation of AHP legislation, the number of uninsured workers and dependents in small firms would increase by more than 1 million individuals—an 8.5 percent increase.
Key consumer protections that would be wiped out for individuals who receive their coverage through these arrangements include:
AHPs represent a bad deal for consumers and a bad deal for businesses. For example:
AHPs Undermine Existing Benefit Guarantees. AHPs would be exempted from most current coverage requirements. Access to critical services such as cervical and colorectal cancer screening, contraceptive coverage, well-child care and mental health benefits could disappear.
AHPs Limit Patient Protections. AHPs would not need to abide by state-level consumer protections, including access to specialty care, access to clinical trials, and the right to independent, external review of denied claims.
AHPs would increase premiums for most small businesses. The majority of small businesses would experience increased premiums under AHP legislation. These premium increases could affect more than 20 million employees and dependents.
AHPs could charge high and discriminatory premiums. Plans would be able to charge unlimited premiums based on age, gender and geography. AHPs could also charge higher premiums to members who have become older and sicker over time.
Attached flextime labor legislation frees employers from rules that mandate a 40-hour work week. Over the past decade, repeated attempts to pass such legislation have failed due to strong opposition from workers and labor unions who claim that flextime legislation will deny millions of workers overtime pay
Any minimum wage legislation that takes steps backwards in gaining healthcare and labor protections for American workers moves us farther away from progress. Even with, 83 percent of Americans support a two dollar increase to the minimum wage. Yet if this comes at the cost of losing overtime wages and healthcare, Congress has not done justice to working Americans.
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