{"id":23212,"date":"2013-12-06T13:38:19","date_gmt":"2013-12-06T18:38:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=23212"},"modified":"2013-12-06T14:28:30","modified_gmt":"2013-12-06T19:28:30","slug":"the-devils-in-the-details-department-obamacare-and-volunteer-firefighters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2013\/12\/06\/the-devils-in-the-details-department-obamacare-and-volunteer-firefighters\/","title":{"rendered":"The devil&#8217;s-in-the-details department: Obamacare and volunteer firefighters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Talk about unintended consequences! <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/campaign-spot\/365660\/how-obamacare-going-louse-your-local-firehouse-jim-geraghty\" target=\"_blank\">Jim Geraghty<\/a> linked to a disturbing issue for many Americans, but especially for Pennsylvanians: the risk of losing some of their volunteer firefighters due to an Obamacare rule. Ninety-seven percent of Pennsylvania fire departments are at least partially staffed by volunteers &#8230; this could be a very serious thing indeed.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>Great. Now Obamacare Is Going to Louse Up Your Local Firehouse\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>They had to pass the law so you could see what\u2019s in it. Kind of like Pandora\u2019s Box.<\/p>\n<p>With any luck, Obamacare won\u2019t close down your local firehouse, just <a href=\"http:\/\/www.firehouse.com\/news\/11267556\/obamacare-requires-fire-departments-to-pay-for-volunteers-health-insurance\" target=\"_blank\">curtail emergency response activities<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>The International Association of Fire Chiefs has asked the Internal Revenue Service, which has partial oversight of the law, to clarify if current IRS treatment of volunteer firefighters as employees means their hose companies or towns must offer health insurance coverage or pay a penalty if they don\u2019t.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The organization representing the fire chiefs has been working on the issue with the IRS and White House for months.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cIt could be a huge deal,\u201d said U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta, R-11, Hazleton, who is seeking clarification from the IRS. \u201cIn Pennsylvania, 97 percent of fire departments are fully or mostly volunteer firefighters. It\u2019s the fourth highest amount in the country.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>So far, the IRS hasn\u2019t decided what to do.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Efforts to reach spokesmen for the IRS were unsuccessful.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Under the fire chiefs\u2019 organization\u2019s interpretation, the concern goes like this:<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The health care reform law, known officially as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and derisively by Republicans as Obamacare, requires employers with 50 or more full-time employees to offer health insurance. Companies with fewer than 50 employees do not have to offer insurance. Full-time employees are defined as an employee who works 30 or more hours a week.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Such employers who don\u2019t offer health insurance must pay fines.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The requirement is complicated by differing interpretations about the status of volunteer firefighters within the federal government. The Department of Labor, according to the fire chiefs group, classifies most volunteers as non-employees, but the IRS considers all volunteer firefighters and emergency medical personnel to be employees of their departments.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cIf the IRS classifies volunteer firefighters and emergency medical personnel as employees in their final rule, fire departments may be unintentionally forced to comply with requirements that could force them to curtail their emergency response activities or close entirely,\u201d the chiefs\u2019 group says on its website.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Talk about unintended consequences! Jim Geraghty linked to a disturbing issue for many Americans, but especially for Pennsylvanians: the risk of losing some of their volunteer firefighters due to an Obamacare rule. Ninety-seven percent of Pennsylvania fire departments are at least partially staffed by volunteers &#8230; this could be a very serious thing indeed. Great. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9,13],"tags":[937,211,118],"class_list":["post-23212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-law","category-usa","tag-obamacare","tag-pennsylvania","tag-taxes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-62o","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23212"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23212\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23216,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23212\/revisions\/23216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}