Employee Benefits Strategic Vision

Recomendations on Retirement and Health Issues

U.S. Chamber of Commerce Employee Benefits Committee - 2009

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Executive Summary

The U.S. Chamber has spent the past year considering various employee benefits issues relating to retirement and health care. The topics covered in this document are proactive agenda items that supplement the Chamber's core employee benefits policies. The Chamber is committed to supporting businesses on retirement and health issues and these recommendations provide guidance on the Chamber's positions on new and emerging issues.

• Phased retirement — The Chamber recognizes the value of phased retirement programs and supports tweaks to the current retirement system to make it easier for employers to implement discretionary phased retirement programs.
• Retirement savings — The Chamber supports increasing retirement savings but opposes implementation of a universal pension scheme (i.e., mandatory automatic IRA) to achieve this goal. Additionally, the Chamber supports the proposition that states should encourage participation in the private retirement system as long as participation is not mandatory.
• Decumulation strategies — The Chamber believes that decumulation strategies are an increasingly important part of retirement security. Therefore, it encourages greater education for participants, innovation among products, and flexibility for employers to try new products and programs.
• Long-term care insurance — The Chamber encourages employers to offer long-term care insurance for their employees but is opposed to mandatory automatic enrollment.
• Cafeteria plans — The Chamber supports changes to cafeteria plans that would make it easier for small business owners to sponsor them, and it opposes proposals that would apply FICA and FUTA taxes to benefits provided under cafeteria plans.
• Small businesses — The Chamber would like to increase small business participation in the larger employer-provided system.
• State and local pension programs — The Chamber supports all efforts to increase retirement coverage but is concerned about any measure that would give state and local governments an unfair advantage over private employers when competing for employees.
• Retiree health care — The Chamber believes that health care for retirees is a valuable benefit for employers to offer and that any proposal involving retiree health should be small business friendly and should not create additional liabilities for employers who choose to offer it.
• Reinsurance — The Chamber believes that reinsurance should be fair, include cost-control standards and coverage limits, and should not involve mandatory participation or contributions.
• Health insurance access and affordability — The Chamber supports incremental, achievable reforms that would increase health insurance affordability before attempting to deal with the concerns surrounding access to health care.
• Restructuring the health care system — The Chamber recognizes that our current health care payment system, which is based on fee-for-service in a sick care environment, contributes to a number of problems including increasing health care costs. The Chamber supports programs, such as the Patient Centered Medical Home, that incentivize doctors to be efficient and provide the best care.