Officials
with the state Fireman’s Association are asking that volunteer fire departments
and rescue squads be exempt from the employer mandate of the Affordable Care
Act.
Currently
Obamacare includes language that requires volunteer fire departments in
the state with greater than 50 employees that average more than 30 hours a
week to provide healthcare coverage to their members.
Tom
Miller with the state Fireman’s Association, who is also part of the
legislative committee, said if this mandate goes into effect, a large number of
VFDs will be negatively impacted.
“We’ve
predicted that it could impact as many as 30 fire departments in the state and
certainly the state can’t afford to lose 30 VFDs,” he said.
Senator
Joe Manchin has introduced a bill on the U.S. Senate side that would exempt the
VFDs from the mandate and a similar bill has also been introduced on the U.S.
House side as well.
Miller
said there seems to be support for the exemption in both the House and
Senate sides but another issue has come up that could be a major roadblock.
“There’s
been so many exemptions granted that the IRS is reluctant to grant additional
exemptions,” he said.
The
mandate would impact departments that are either individually by itself or
those that are part of the municipality that it serves. This would include VFDs
in New Martinsville, Shinnston and Stonewood to name a few.
Miller
said VFDs normally set up their budgets a year in advance and many are
currently trying to plan ahead and decide how to survive with the mandate.
“Some
have talked about dismissing volunteers so they can get below the 50 number,”
he explains. “Some have talked about curtailing services so they drop their
services hours below 30 hours a week.”
Currently
over 90 percent of the Mountain
State
Miller
said regardless of what the departments do, the impacts are not going to
be positive. He said something needs to be done and done very soon.
“I
guess we are kind of tired of being an over-site,” he said. “Someone need to
look at the impact of these kind of decisions on how it’s going to affect the
day to day emergency response in communities.”
The
mandate would officially go into effect in January 2015.
