NRECA has worked to ensure that all member cooperatives have access to comprehensive, flexible and affordable health insurance programs for employees and their dependents. Electric cooperatives provide health insurance benefits to over 100,000 employees, retirees and their families. Under the federal Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), the NRECA Medical Plan is a national plan that allows each member co-op to design a health benefit package tailored to its employees and retirees. Whether an electric co-op provides health insurance through NRECA or from another source, ever-rising health care costs threaten our ability to provide health insurance. We support all efforts to make health care more affordable, so that all electric co-ops can maintain these critical benefits. Reforms must also preserve each electric co-op’s ability to tailor its health benefits package as currently allowed under ERISA, and should not be taxed in order to fund other government spending.

We applaud the “American Health Care Act” for not including any new, direct taxes on workers' employer-provided health benefit, and for delaying the “Cadillac Tax” until 2022. However, we will work with lawmakers to fully repeal this unfair tax in any final Conference Agreement.​