Obamacare Extinguishes Our Volunteer Firemen and EMS

By Elizabeth Nelson

Here’s one more group Obamacare can add to its list of unintended casualties: volunteer fire departments. 

Through the wonderful forethought of our brilliant Empiric leader combining Obamacare and the IRS, volunteer firefighters may now be considered “employees,” and if so, their volunteer fire departments may be forced to provide healthcare coverage, under the Obamacare law, or pay penalties that would force them to shut down.

A local congressman wants answers on whether volunteer firefighting companies could be unintentionally swept into the national health care reform law championed by President Barack Obama.

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't.

The organization representing the fire chiefs has been working on the issue with the IRS and White House for months.

"It could be a huge deal," said U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta, R-11, Hazleton, who is seeking clarification from the IRS. "In Pennsylvania, 97 percent of fire departments are fully or mostly volunteer firefighters. It's the fourth highest amount in the country."

The IRS seems to be dragging its feet on the matter. Until a decision is made, thousands of fire departments will be feeling Obamacare’s heat and will not be able to do a thing about it.

So far, the IRS hasn't decided what to do.  Efforts to reach spokesmen for the IRS were unsuccessful.

Under the fire chiefs' organization's interpretation, the concern goes like this:

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.

Such employers who don't offer health insurance must pay fines.

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.

"If 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," the chiefs' group says on its website.Read more Firehouse.com

It’s time to stop pussy footing around and repeal and replace Obamacare.  There are 200 suggested line item improvement “fixes” that Obama won’t even listen to, just sitting idle in the Republican House and 4 Republican Replacements for the disastrous Obamacare, which the American people don’t even know about, and this coming from the Dictator that said he was “open to revising the Healthcare law”. 

Obamacare is not the answer.