Meadows-sponsored bill relieves students of Obamacare mandate

Western Carolina University senior Tyann Stubbs juggles two on-campus jobs to help pay her own way through school. And she loves her work. But while the studio art major’s jobs at WCU’s career center and art museum offer great experience, she is limited to working just 25 hours per week during the school year — a rule the university put in place to avoid triggering the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate, says Chancellor David Belcher.

Under current ACA rules, all full-time college students who work 30 or more hours a week for their school must be offered the opportunity to sign onto their employer’s ACA-mandated insurance plan. It’s a regulation that can incur high costs to both universities and students, and deters schools like WCU from hiring student workers to work in full-time capacities, Belcher said.

Many students at WCU and other schools within the University of North Carolina System face similar challenges, says Belcher, who last year alongside U.S. Rep. Mark Meadows, R-11th District, helped introduce legislation in the U.S. House of Representatives that would exempt student workers from the employer mandate.

“WCU simply doesn’t have the funding to cover the cost of health insurance for students,” Belcher told Carolina Journal, noting that in 2014 the university calculated a starting cost of $302,515 to insure 75 approved full-time workers of the school’s total 1,500 student employees.

“Some people have suggested that universities might need to raise the cost of attendance to cover the cost of insurance,” Belcher continued. “At WCU, this would be in direct opposition to our commitment to keeping the cost of attendance as low as possible.”

Belcher also pointed to proposals that suggest WCU and other universities reduce their number of student employees, calling such efforts “counterproductive to efforts to keep students on track to graduate in four years.”

WCU’s 25-hour weekly limit is less-than-ideal for Stubbs, who averages 15-18 credit hours a semester and depends on her paychecks to cover living expenses and curb any costs not covered by her student financial aid package.

“Like most students and most people, I have bills,” Stubbs said. “I’m the first person in my family to go to college, so I am putting myself through. So it was kind of crucial for me to get jobs on campus.”

While Stubbs says she feels lucky to have good jobs and financial aid to help make ends meet, her limited earning potential is a very real problem.

“I use my financial aid so that I can save up my money that I earn working so that when I get out of school I can have my bases covered,” Stubbs said. “But, you know, it’s tight. We’re not above eating ramen two or three nights a week.”

“We know that employment on campus, as opposed to employment elsewhere, increases the likelihood that students stay enrolled, make good grades, and graduate on time,” Belcher said.

Meadows’ House Resolution 210, “The Student Worker Exemption Act of 2015,” passed the Ways and Means Committee on June 16 and will next be considered on the House floor. The bill would amend the Internal Revenue Code to ensure that full-time college students who are also employed by their schools to work 30 or more hours a week would not be classified under the ACA as “full-time employees.”

Such a change is about common sense, Meadows said, calling the ACA’s employer mandate a burden on both students and universities.

“College students typically secure health coverage through their family’s plan or through government-regulated student health plans offered by institutions of higher education,” according to a statement Meadows made when the bill passed the committee. “Nonetheless, under the employer mandate, colleges and universities must supply duplicative health insurance under their employee health plans to student workers.”

The UNC system is a model for this redundancy in coverage under the ACA, as students at any of the 16 universities already are required to have health insurance — whether they are covered through their parents’ policies, or decide to purchase coverage at a student rate through UNC’s plan, Belcher said.

If a student worker reaches full-time status under the employer mandate and decides to enroll in WCU’s mandated employer insurance plan, the cost to the university would be $122.78 per student per month, Belcher said. The student would be responsible for covering $93.16 of that cost.

Neither students nor universities should be saddled with that extra financial burden, he said, pointing to the ACA’s unintended impact on student workers as the catalyst for his work to help Meadows develop H.R. 210.

Passing such legislation would help students who have the ability to reconcile work and academic schedules the opportunity to work more hours, Stubbs said, pointing to her experiences at WCU’s career center as evidence that many undergraduates would work more hours — if they could without incurring prohibitive insurance obligations.

“We get calls all the time with students saying, ‘Well, I have a 4.0 GPA, I can juggle [more hours].’ But we have to say, ‘Sorry, you can only work so many.’”

Congressional support for the legislation has been promising, said Meadows spokesman Ben Williamson, and the bill is likely to go before the House soon, though no vote has been scheduled.

The bill’s 33 sponsors include North Carolina U.S. Reps. Renee Ellmers, R-2nd District, Walter Jones, R-3rd District, and Robert Pittenger, R-9th District. No Senate sponsors have been enlisted, Williamson said.

“There’s almost always some level of pushback on everything, but we feel very positive about the bill’s prospects,” Williamson said. “Passing the Ways and Means Committee is a great sign.”