Archive for February, 2009
Second principle for universal coverage: Treat Covered Relationships Equally
There is no national right to health insurance, and the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) prohibits states from requiring that employers provide health insurance. Nonetheless, numerous laws encourage and shape job-based coverage through taxes, fines, and continuing coverage rules. Some examples:
- The IRS does not collect income taxes on the money that companies or workers spend on premiums for job-based health insurance, thus lowering the total cost of coverage.
- Several states give employers the option of either providing insurance or paying into a fund that is used to subsidize insurance for non-covered workers.
- Under the federal Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA), people may stay on their employer’s group plan by paying the full premium (both the employer’s and the beneficiary’s share) for up to 18 months after a “triggering event” makes them ineligible for the job-based coverage. Although COBRA applies only to employers with 20 or more employees, 41 states have COBRA-like laws that apply to smaller employers.
None of these laws currently takes into account the increasing prevalence of coverage for non-marital relationships. As a result, unmarried partners pay more for coverage, and lose coverage more often, than spouses do.
- The IRS should exempt domestic partner or plus-one benefits from income taxes. COBRA should require continuing coverage for everyone who is on a job-based plan. (Over 120 of you wrote to Congress urging them to update COBRA during the stimulus package debate.) These changes require acts of Congress, because the Defense of Marriage Act prevents federal agencies from extending spousal benefits to non-spouses. Congress should repeal the Defense of Marriage Act.
- State COBRA-like laws should require that all insured beneficiaries have equal access to continuing coverage.
- State “pay or play” health reforms should make employers who cover spouses but not unmarried partners contribute to state funds to subsidize insurance for those partners.
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Feb 24th, 2009 by Nicky
Inching towards universal health coverage
Health insurance can’t be universal unless it is separated from both employment and marriage / relationship status. However, most health care reform proposals center on expanding job-based insurance. Most employers use marital status (or sometimes, relationship status) to define the family eligible for coverage. Small employers may have to follow the family definitions set out by whatever insurance plans they can afford. Narrow definitions of family inevitably discriminate against a wide variety of caring relationships. Basing coverage on any relationship inevitably discriminates against singles.
Only a true single-payer system would offer all individuals an equal starting point for levels of care and costs. While we’re waiting for single-payer, advocates can generate dozens of opportunities to increase the number of unmarried people covered by job-based insurance, by applying three simple principles. These principles are guiding AtMP’s work on health care, and I’ll present them in a series of blog posts.
Principle #1: Cover More Relationships
Job-based family insurance should cover an employee plus one non-dependent adult plus tax dependents. Many American workers are primary caretakers for siblings, parents, neighbors or friends. These responsibilities fill the function of family, not only for these workers and the people they care for, but also for the larger society, which is spared from allocating public caretaking resources. Insurance coverage would both validate people’s chosen families and also make these families more effective.
Recent news from Salt Lake City, Utah offers a good example of “plus-one” coverage. Back in 2004, Salt Lake City amended its procurement rules to provide preference for companies with non-discrimination policies that include protections for GLBT employees. It would be great if SLC would now strengthen this rule (generically called an Equal Benefits Ordinance) to requiring that any business with a public contract cover adult-designees to the same extent as spouses.
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Feb 24th, 2009 by Nicky
What’s at Issue
From USA Today:
“Most people want to get married someday, and most do. That’s not at issue,” says Nicky Grist of the Brooklyn-based Alternatives to Marriage Project, a non-profit advocate for the rights of the unmarried.
She and others have organized an ad hoc coalition that will ask the Obama administration to stop using anti-poverty money for marriage promotion.
“What’s at issue is really two things, from our perspective,” she says. “Should government tell people when to get married? And should government and society privilege marriage over all other relationships? Our answer to both those questions is no.”
What do YOU think about federally funded marriage advertisements? How do you think “the administration [should] “make choices based on shrinking budgets and a worsening economy?”
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marriage promotion
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Feb 18th, 2009 by Nicky
a long post about advocacy
120 AtMPers emailed Congress last week, asking that the stimulus bill include domestic partners in its expansion of Cobra affordability. On Monday I called Senator Sue Collin’s office (because she has expressed support for domestic partners and because she had a high-profile role in the stimulus compromise). Her staff said that there were already 500 amendments proposed so there is no chance that they could squeeze in an amendment guaranteeing Cobra for domestic partners. But, we’ve started the conversation.
120 letters is a really good turnout – we invited fewer than 900 people to participate – about 10% of AtMP’s membership. Why so few? Because AtMP’s privacy policy promises to send only those messages that we think people really want, based on what they tell us about themselves. For example, if you want to receive action alerts about health care, check off the health care box here. (You can edit any part of your member record, which shapes how we contact you.)
Although we didn’t win Cobra guarantees for domestic partners, we did raise awareness about yet another example of marital status discrimination, and we strengthened some alliances and made new contacts in Washington. This is a good example of AtMP’s increased focus on advocacy. Some members have asked whether this is lobbying, whether it’s allowed, and whether they could be personally targetted as donors they way people were in the aftermath of Prop 8.
Yes, it’s lobbying; yes, it’s allowed. AtMP’s tax status is 501c3, and we have filed the proper forms with the IRS so we’re allowed to use up to 20% of our cash expenses telling decision makers how to vote on specific legislation, and we’re allowed to use up to 5% of our cash expenses urging people to tell their lawmakers how to vote.
No, our donors do not have to be identified if they don’t want to be. Anyone can donate anonymously. We list non-anonymous donors in our annual reports, which we mail to the donors and post online. But we do not send a list of donors to the IRS or any state regulator.
I asked the Alliance for Justice how to explain what happened with Prop 8; their response is so helpful that I’m quoting it entirely (with permission):
The reason this issue can get a little confusing is that there are two completely separate laws working here. The federal tax law that governs your 501(c)(3) status (and limits how much you can lobby under the 501(h) election) is different from the California campaign finance laws that require disclosure of some donors to ballot measure committees.
Under federal tax law, your work on ballot measures is treated as lobbying, and all you have to worry about is staying within your lobbying limits. California campaign finance law (California’s Political Reform Act) requires disclosure of campaign contributions and expenditures in connection with state and local elections, including ballot measure elections. Even though you as a 501(c)(3) are staying within your lobbying limits, you still also have to comply with the California disclosure laws if you engage in certain activities around ballot measures. You can see various campaign disclosure manuals that apply to different types of ballot measure committees on the California Fair Political Practices Commission website: http://www.fppc.ca.gov/index.html?id=505#cam.
The reason that the Prop 8 donors are being disclosed has to do with California’s campaign disclosure laws; these donors were solicited by nonprofits that had become ballot measure committees, but not all nonprofits that work on ballot measures automatically become ballot measure committees. You have to do certain things and raise money a certain way in order to be classified as a ballot measure committee. I’m being very general right now, because these laws can get pretty complicated.
Today AtMP is helping Virginians advocate for recognition of family diversity in school curricula. This campaign was initiated by just one member – she keeps an eye on state government, emailed me with a ‘heads up’ last month and called me yesterday to make it urgent. Meanwhile, volunteers in New York are planning a campaign for better hospital rights. Go grassroots activists!
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advocacy, marriage promotion
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Feb 10th, 2009 by Nicky
Immigration and Taxes
Several recent news items and commentaries highlight the injustice and illogic of using relationship status to determine immigration status or tax rate.
Marriage makes it easier to immigrate, but if you lose your spouse, you lose your immigration status. AtMP supports efforts to make immigration policy more fair (read our whole statement here). As always, we’d like to see all partners treated equally, regardless of marital status or gender. Debanuj Dasgupta (my co-panelist at a conference last Saturday) makes a good point: letting US citizens sponsor their partners expands the rights only of US citizens, but is not an expansion of immigrants’ rights. Is that really all we want?
Marriage will lower your federal income taxes if only one spouse has an income, but raise your taxes if both spouses make good money. Our friend Dennis J. Ventry Jr. calls it a “Stay-At-Home-Spouse Tax Subsidy,” or “Married Families Are Better Than Any Other Families Tax Subsidy.” This tax policy is based on outdated assumptions about work and gender roles (Debra Siegel’s observations about high income one-earner married couples demonstrate why we’d want to encourage more egalitarian relationships through our tax code).
States also use the standard deduction to promote one-earner marriages. For example, Rhode Island is proposing to end its “marriage penalty” by making a married couple’s standard deduction twice as big as a single person’s. This is unfair because single taxpayers will have to make up the difference, or do without public services. But maybe there’s a silver lining: with all the bad news about layoffs, RI could market its new “unemployed spouse stimulus package.” I can just see the ad campaigns: “Lost your job? Ran out of unemployment benefits? You can earn up to $7500 by getting married (to someone who still has a job, of course)!” or, “Employed? Take advantage of this great offer: Marry someone who’s jobless, and you’ll be eligible for a $7500 tax deduction!”
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Feb 4th, 2009 by Nicky
