President Joe Biden's administration released its $1.8 trillion spending plan April 28, and it includes several components relevant to healthcare organizations as employers and businesses.
Here are five takeaways about the the American Families Plan, which the president will pitch to Congress during his address April 28:
1. The American Families Plan includes $1 trillion in investments and $800 billion in tax credits for families and children over 10 years. It would be funded through tax reforms focused on the highest income Americans, including raising the top tax rate on the top-earning 1 percent of Americans from 37 percent to 39.6 percent, the rate in place before the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.
2. The plan includes a $200 billion investment to make health insurance premium reductions that were set to last two years permanent. The plan builds upon the administration's American Rescue Plan, which extended two years of lower health insurance premiums for those who buy coverage on their own, saving families an average of $50 per person per month. The administration says 9 million people will save hundreds of dollars annually on premiums, and 4 million uninsured will gain coverage as a result of those premium reductions becoming permanent.
3. The plan includes an investment of $225 billion over 10 years to create a national comprehensive paid family and medical leave program. Under the program, workers would receive partial wage replacement to take time off for personal and family reasons, including bonding with a new child; caring for a seriously ill loved one; dealing with a loved one's military deployment; and finding safety from sexual assault, stalking, or domestic violence. The program would guarantee three days of bereavement leave starting in year one and 12 weeks of paid parental, family and personal illness/safe leave by year 10. Workers would receive up to $4,000 a month, with at least two-thirds of their average weekly wages replaced. Lowest wage workers would get 80 percent of their pay replaced.
4. The plan includes an investment of $225 billion to help families pay for child care based on a sliding scale, to provide funding to child care providers and to move to a $15 minimum wage for child care workers. For the most hard-pressed working families, child care costs for young children would be fully covered, and families earning 1.5 times their state median income would pay no more than 7 percent of their income. Families would receive a tax credit for up to half of their spending on qualified child care for children under age 13 — up to a total of $4,000 for one child or $8,000 for two or more children.
5. President Biden is calling to expand the child tax credit through 2025, which was first enacted in the American Rescue Plan. The American Families Plan expands and makes fully refundable the tax credit from $2,000 per child to $3,000 per child for children 6 years old and above and $3,600 per child for children under 6.