After weeks of intense negotiations and a lengthy amendment process, the U.S. Senate Finance Committee completed work on the fifth and final congressional committee-level healthcare reform legislation.
The bill, now awaiting consideration for passage on the Senate floor, contains good news for small nonprofits. These organizations will be able to apply a tax credit against their federal withholding taxes as a key incentive for extending and maintaining healthcare coverage to employees.
Partly because of the efforts of a national coalition of nonprofit organizations that included Americans for the Arts, Finance Chairman Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT) included a provision that would seek to achieve nonprofit parity with for-profit employers who currently have an array of incentives to expand coverage in every version of healthcare legislation being considered.
The bill also includes the creation of a new insurance marketplace that will allow both individuals, such as self-employed artists and small nonprofit organizations, to compare and buy health insurance plans at competitive prices.
America's Healthy Future Act
For more information on healthcare and the arts, please e-mail Associate Director of Federal Affairs Gladstone Payton at gpayton@artsusa.org.
