June MTc3 – News for the Nonprofit Sector in Montana

The Great Healthcare Reform Debate

The great healthcare reform debate is well underway with our own Senator Baucus from Montana playing the central congressional leadership role in the discussion. Like many others, we at MNA are hopeful – maybe even cautiously optimistic – that a bipartisan package will eventually emerge that furthers the President’s goals of covering the estimated 50 million uninsured, controlling costs, and improving health and wellness across the country.

Director’s Update from the desk of Brian Magee

Will nonprofits have a home in the healthcare package that emerges? Will more nonprofits be able to offer affordable healthcare to their employees in the future? Answers to these questions will likely depend on the degree to which we make our voices heard. Although it may sound simplistic, the message is short and focused: Don’t forget nonprofits.

MNA has some experience with what can happen when we don’t speak loudly and often on healthcare. You may remember a number of years ago when the Insure Montana program was in development. At the time, State Auditor John Morrison assured MNA membership at our 2004 Annual Conference in Billings that small nonprofits would be fully eligible for the program once implemented. We wondered how that would work with tax credits, given that nonprofits do not pay corporate income taxes to the state that could then be credited at the end of the year. We were told that those issues were administrative and could be worked out post-passage.

As it turns out, the devil was certainly in the details. After the bill passed the legislature in 2005, the Department of Revenue indicated, based on their reading of the law, that small nonprofits (who otherwise met all of the criteria) were in fact not eligible for the tax credit portion of the program (a full 40% of the overall Insure Montana program). Only small business, not small nonprofits, were eligible.

As the years have passed, I have come to believe that a large portion of the responsibility for what happened rests at our feet. Commissioner Morrison had the best of intentions with the program; he had long been an advocate for nonprofits and still is to this day. It was our consistent voice – the nonprofit voice – that was the missing ingredient to that discussion as it moved from concept to details. Hard lesson learned, but one that we have not forgotten at MNA.

The good news is that times have changed. MNA is now much stronger and better organized and our policy program has grown by leaps and bounds. We are positioned to make our voice heard and we intend to do so with healthcare. Next month, the MNA team will participate in the National Council of Nonprofit’s Lobby Day in Washington DC where we will meet with our entire congressional delegation and focus on healthcare. Delegations from all the other state nonprofit associations will be doing the same. Our message will be simple: Don’t forget nonprofits.

We encourage you to make your voice heard on this critically important issue as well.

Full Newsletter: http://www.mtnonprofit.org/enews.aspx