Association Health Plan Bill Stalls In Senate
D.C. Wrap-Up 2004
by Jonathan Yarowsky
NATO Washington Counsel
2004 has been a very active
year for NATO in Washington, D.C.: NATO headquarters
officially moved
to Capitol Hill
in January; the association’s board of directors
meeting was held here in May; and all the while NATO continued
with a brisk pace in its government-related activity. As
the 108th Congress finishes its business for 2004, it may
be useful to review the final status of NATO’s top
legislative priorities this year.
Media Violence/Content
Issues: As in
most election years, content issues received their “fair share” of
attention in 2004 – perhaps even more than their
fair share in a year that began with Janet Jackson’s
high-profile “wardrobe malfunction.” Both House
and Senate introduced legislation – the Broadcast
Decency Enforcement Act (H.R. 3717/S. 2056) – to
dramatically increase fines that the Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) could levy on those in violation of broadcast
indecency standards. The act would also allow the FCC to
fine individual performers involved in such violations.
The House passed the legislation by a vote
of 391-22, but the Senate did not take action on its companion
measure.
In the meantime, the FCC levied $550,000 in fines against
CBS and several of its affiliates for broadcasting the
incident.
On a related front, the Federal Trade Commission
(FTC) on July 8 released its fifth report on the marketing
of
violent entertainment to children. While the report’s
release did not receive much media attention, it did highlight
the exhibition industry’s continued hard work and
diligence toward enforcement of the movie rating system.
Perhaps of greatest interest to theatre owners, the FTC
report noted that “the commission’s undercover
shopper survey of children’s access to tickets for
R-rated films indicated significant improvement by movie
theatres, as only 36 percent of the 13- to 16-year-old
shoppers successfully purchased tickets. In contrast, DVD
retailers – included for the first time in this survey – sold
R-rated DVDs to 81 percent of teen shoppers seeking to
buy them.” The FTC also gave theatre owners good
marks for providing information about ratings and about
why movies received specific ratings, both at the box office
and through their websites.
Other content-related issues that received
congressional attention and oversight included: 1) the
depiction of smoking
in films (Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.) suggested including
smoking as a factor in determining whether a movie receives
an R-rating); and 2) the advocacy of a universal entertainment
ratings code by Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.). Both issues
were the subjects of hearings in the Senate Commerce
Committee.
Intellectual Property: While NATO has
been increasingly active on the state and local level
with regard to copyright
issues, 2004 marked the first year in which NATO moved
forcefully into the federal debate on protecting intellectual
property on the Internet. While many have focused on so-called “new-media” piracy,
legislation introduced this year attacked an “old-media” problem:
camcording in cinemas. Both H.R. 4077 and S. 1932 criminalize
the use of recording devices in movie theatres. As introduced,
however, the legislation did not include liability protections
for theatre owners who attempt to stop such illegal activity.
NATO worked closely and successfully with members of the
House and Senate to include “immunity” language
protecting cinema owners from lawsuits when those exhibitors
take reasonable actions to stop the illegal activity. However,
because of controversy surrounding other intellectual property
issues packaged with the camcorder provisions in a larger
bill, no final action on the larger package had at press
time been taken.
Movie Captioning Tax Credit Legislation: As noted earlier
this year, during the consideration of S. 1637, the “Jumpstart
Our Business Strength” (JOBS) act, Sen. Mark Dayton
(D-Minn.) proposed an amendment to provide a tax credit
for expenses incurred in making motion pictures more
accessible to the deaf and hard-of-hearing. The version
of S. 1637 passed by the Senate in May included a 50-percent
tax credit intended to help defray the cost of open or
closed captioning services. After several contentious
months of deliberations over the larger bill, the final
version of the JOBS act passed the House of Representatives
on Oct. 7, and the Senate on Oct. 11, without movie-captioning
tax-credit provisions. The bill is expected to be signed
into law by the president.
Association Health Plans: Another
new issue for NATO in 2004 was association health plans
(AHPs). In an attempt
to redress the problem of the medically uninsured in many
industrial sectors, NATO joined with a large coalition
of trade associations to support AHP legislation being
considered in Congress. Although the bill passed the House,
its legislative momentum stalled in the Senate.
AHP legislation would allow members of “bona-fide” associations
to pool together to purchase health insurance for themselves
and their employees. While the most powerful public focus
of the debate has been the legislation’s usefulness
to small businesses, the bill would, in fact, allow all
members of any bona-fide association to access the insurance
options made available through this new pooling mechanism.
Not only was NATO active in the coalition’s efforts
to support the proposal, the proposal became the primary
focus of targeted lobbying by a group of NATO’s independent
owners lobbying their home-state senators during our Hill
Day activities in May. (As usual, your “old Washington
hands” learned a thing or two from the exuberant
and forceful presentations of the real thing – NATO
members!)
Minimum Wage: Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.) once again proposed
a raise in the minimum wage, this year to the level of
$7 per hour. The Senate leadership did not bring up the
legislation for a stand-alone vote, thus leaving the minimum
hourly wage at its current level of $5.15.
As is evident, this concluding session
of the 108th Congress has been an eventful one for NATO
and its members. At the
time of this writing, Congress intends to return to Washington
post-election to conduct a limited “lame-duck” session
to pass, among other things, an appropriations measure
to fund Homeland Security activities. Depending on the
extent of the lame-duck, other initiatives affecting NATO’s
interests may well come to the floors of the House and
Senate. We will certainly remain vigilant on those issues,
as the 108th Congress prepares to wrap up and make room
for the incoming 109th in January.
