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Stateside Comment US Correspondent Catherine Levin reports on the impact of President Obama’s healthcare reform on volunteer firefighters
I
never thought I would say this, but I miss the NHS. Access to healthcare in the US is an expensive business and without any form of insurance, you can expect hefty bills when your health fails. A recent visit to a doctor to unblock my right ear resulted in a bill to my insurers of $1,000 which they then proceeded to negotiate down to just $200. This is a crazy and complex system. The healthcare system has been getting a lot of attention in the US because of President Obama’s focus on increasing health insurance coverage. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, more commonly known as Obamacare, frequently makes front page news, mostly at the moment because of the IT problems that bedevil access. One of the key aspects of Obamacare is the employer mandate provision. This means that where an employer has more than 50 employees they
must provide health insurance for those that work more than 30 hours a week. The impact on the Fire Service of this provision isn’t immediately obvious until you consider how the Fire Service is structured here. With around 30,000 fire departments in the US and almost three quarters of them staffed by volunteers, many of them would fall within the employee mandate provision. This has caused great consternation here as Congress has considered how each fire department could afford to provide health insurance for its volunteers. “This is a public safety issue” noted Republican Lou Barletta (Pennsylvania 11th District) as he addressed the House of Representatives early in January. “It will only shut down fire companies and cause a severe threat to public safety”, he argued as he presented the Protecting Volunteer Firefighters
and Emergency Responders Act to the House. Taking every opportunity to slate the President and his signature legislation, the Republicans in the House lamented the ‘unintended consequences’ of Obamacare and implored the Internal Revenue Service to respond to their requests to review the status of volunteer firefighters and exempt them from the employer mandate provision. The Bill had 90 co-sponsors drawn from both sides of the House and was accompanied by identical bi-partisan legislation in the Senate. The power of the Fire Caucus and the influence of the Congressional Fire Services Institute were clearly at work here. And lo and behold, two days after the House debate on the Barletta Bill, Mark J Mazur, Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy at the Treasury Department, published an almost incomprehensible post
on the Treasury Department blog. He wrote: ‘As a result of that review and analysis, the forthcoming final regulations relating to employer shared responsibility generally will not require volunteer hours of bona fide volunteer firefighters and volunteer emergency medical personnel at governmental or tax-exempt organizations to be counted when determining full-time employees (or full-time equivalents)’. I was a civil servant in the UK for ten years and I don’t think I ever reached that level of convoluted bureaucratic drafting. Sir Humphrey would be proud. I had to read that several times before I realised it meant yes, the volunteer firefighters will be exempted and the threat to fire cover in the US abated. So that should kill the House and Senate Bills nicely and leave the Republicans to find a new forum to moan about Obamacare. I don’t think they’ll find that too difficult.
Dorset and Wiltshire and Swindon fire authorities explore merger option The two fire services are looking at the business case for a merger in 2016
D
orset and Wiltshire and Swindon Fire authorities have agreed to work towards developing a business case for a potential merger in April 2016. Elected members in Dorset met on December 5, with elected members in Wiltshire and Swindon meeting a week later, to discuss papers from both chief fire officers. These called for a period of due diligence to develop a business case that would identify savings and improve resilience. The announcement followed the recent Facing the Future: Findings from the review of efficiencies and operations in fire
and rescue authorities in England report by Sir Ken Knight. The report recommended that services should, where appropriate, look for potential mergers. Both authorities agreed that it would be irresponsible not to look at closer working and the possibility of combination. In considering the development of a business case, both authorities discussed the similarities between the two services and geographical areas they protect: • Dorset and Wiltshire are predominantly rural counties, with the majority of fire cover already provided by retained (on-call)
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firefighters • Each county has similar demographics, and local risks (such as the high number of thatched properties) are much the same • The two organisations already work together on a number of initiatives because of their shared border • Both face financial challenges, as the level of funding received from central government has already been substantially reduced and this is expected to be halved by 2019 • Meeting the shortfall produced by this reduction in funding cannot be sustained
without a significant impact on frontline services A joint statement from Cllr Rebecca Knox, Chairman of Dorset Fire Authority, and Cllr Graham Payne, Chairman of Wiltshire and Swindon Fire Authority, stated: ‘Both Services have and continue to make substantial savings, but the level of grant we receive from government will continue to decline. In order to minimise any impact on the level of response we provide to our communities, members of both fire authorities have agreed to explore closer working with a view to the combination in 2016’.