Volunteer fire departments and other volunteer emergency squads are still waiting to learn from the IRS whether they will have to provide and pay for volunteers’ medical insurance under ObamaCare.
President Obama’s signature health-care law requires businesses with more than 50 full-time employees to provide health insurance for them. Whether the IRS considers volunteers full-time employees remains unclear, in part because some receive a stipend or other financial incentives. For example, many utilities and retail outlets in areas covered by such volunteer services offer those volunteer’s a discount. “At this point, it’s pretty much wait and see,” Michael Berg, president of the Charlottesville-Albemarle Rescue Squad in Virginia, said in a statement. “We’re an all-volunteer organization. …There’s a lot of speculation.”
Volunteer groups around the country which operate in more rural areas and rely for the most part on fund-raisers and donations to buy fire trucks and other rescue equipment and have gotten some help from Capitol Hill. Virginia Senator Mark Warner and Pennsylvania Representative Lou Barletta have sponsored legislation to exempt volunteer fire, medical and rescue personnel from full-time status. “This is just another example of how ObamaCare was not well thought out,” Barletta said. “So, we’re left to try to pave over the potholes. And this is a big one, possibly affecting fire stations nationwide,” Barletta said on December 11 while introducing the Protecting Volunteer Firefighter and Emergency Responders Act. He also said that classifying volunteers as full-time employees could result in “unbearable financial burdens” for agencies and is “threatening public safety.”
Most volunteer services just do not have the financial capability to comply with the law if the volunteers are classified as full-time. The legislation has support from the National Volunteer Fire Council and the International Association of Fire Chiefs. “Agencies don’t have the resources to provide health benefits to their volunteers and individual volunteers have no expectation of receiving such benefits from the agencies they serve,” said NVFC Chairman Phillip Stittleburg.
The Obama administration this summer delayed the implementation of the Affordable Care Act’s so-called “employer mandate” until 2015. The IRS has yet to give an official ruling, however, Treasury spokeswoman Victoria Esser recently said that the agency has received comments regarding the proposed regulations issued last December. “We ae taking those comments into account as we work toward issuing final regulations on the employer responsibility provision, 4980H of the Internal Revenue Code,” she said. “Pending issuance of the final regulations, it would not be appropriate for us to comment on their likely content.”
ObamaCare defines a full-time employee as somebody working 30 hours or more. Among the lingering questions is how the IRS would count Volunteers’ hours. “Does it mean when a volunteer is wearing a beeper or carrying a fire department cell phone?” Barletta asks. “Does it include downtime at the station house? Listening to a scanner? These are all legitimate questions raised since ObamaCare has been forced on Americans.”
I guess my question would be, will the government be liable for damages or loss of life in the event there were not these wonderful volunteers’ around to help the everyday citizen across our country?