The Virginia Main Street Alliance will be presenting a 1 hour seminar on health care reform in Virginia on the morning of Thursday November 10 in Norfolk.  The event will be at Harbour Place Condominiums, 215 Brooke Ave starting at 8:00 am.  A breakfast will be provided.  The seminar is limited to the first 40 people so email bob@bobbecker.org if you wish to attend. 

The leadership team of the Virginia Main Street Alliance has decided to work to make health care reform better in the upcoming session of the Virginia General Assembly.  The governor will be submitting a bill to create a health benefit exchange and the VMSA will work to make the HBE better for Virginia’s small businesses. 

One of the key issues VMSA will be working on in the GA around health care reform is whether the Health Benefits Exchange (the “buyers club” that will allow small businesses to be part of a large pool) will be allowed to use its buying power to get better rates for small businesses.  The Health benefits Exchange should have over 100,000 covered employees.  The VMSA believes that with this many participants, the HBE should be able to negotiate for lower rates for Virginia’s small businesses.  We expect that the governor will try to prohibit the HBE from using its buying power this way. 

The Commonwealth Institute has a good article on the Health Benefits Exchange.  It is available at http://thecommonwealthinstitute.org/Portals/16/Health/healthexchanges.jan.10.v3.lowres.pdf

The Virginia Main Street Alliance has surveyed over 400 small businesses about whether the Health Benefit Exchange should be allowed to use its buying power to get lower rates.  Over 2/3 of the respondents support using this buying power to negotiate for lower rates. 

The Small Business Majority will be hosting a seminar for small businesses on health care reform the morning of Thursday, November 10 in Richmond.  The session will be from 8-10 am at Virginia Housing Development Authority, 4224 Cox Road, Glen Allen, VA 23020.  To register go to: http://www.aarp.org/states/va/stateeventdetails.eventId=NA&stateCode=VA/

As of October 1 there are new limits on debt card swipe fees.  The new limit is 26 cents per swipe.  The national MSA was very active in this fight.  See http://mainstreetalliance.org/ for more information. 

The General Assembly is the House and Senate of the state of Virginia.  It consists of 100 members of the House of Delegates and 40 state senators.  The GA will begin meeting in January.  All 140 members of the General Assembly are on the November 8 ballot. 

The General Assembly generally operates through a committee system.  The house and senate committees that will be dealing with health care reform will be meeting on November 15 to learn more about the issue and what the governor will be proposing. 

One item of interest that the state is talking about is changing the law to allow a one person small business to get a group rate.  The federal health care reform law allows this.  It should help single person small businesses to get better rates.  The General Assembly should decide this early next year. 

The website www.healthcare.gov/law/timeline/index.html provides a very good timeline and explanation of health care reform.   

There is a federal tax credit for businesses that provide health insurance for their employees.  For more information go to http://www.healthcare.gov/  and click on the link for small business tax credits on the bottom left. 

These Updates are a service of the Virginia Main Street Alliance.  Copies of previous updates can be found at http://www.virginia-organizing.org/category/issues/small-business  The same information may be found in several different updates because so few people see any given email.