'A Public Safety Disaster': Obamacare Could Force THOUSANDS of Volunteer Fire Departments to Close

[houcoogster]

How many volunteer fire departments have more than 20-25 fireman?

Exactly....Foxy News is getting desperate.

 

[RayNY]

Smells fishy because it's "pending final rule". IRS hasn't issued official ruling whether VF counts as employees for PPACA purposes, or what counts as hours, as I indicated.

Quoted from the article:

"If the IRS classifies volunteer firefighters and emergency medical personnel as employees in their final rule..."

 

[Norwayguy]

I know a lot of VF who don't have HI at another job. The article went on to ask how they define hours? 30 hours at calls? 30 hours on-call? 30 hours with the radio on? 30 hours in the firehouse?

Heck, most of my VF friends basically live at the house, 30 hours is a "weekend".

30 hours is just getting started in the avoid the wife annual games....If all they manage is 30 hours a week they are novices at it.

 

[Yagents]

Where's my exemption?

Volunteer firefighters exempted from PPACA | BenefitsPro

 

[RayNY]

Obama waves a pen and exempts wide swaths of supporters, very explicitly.

IRS and the Treasury dept. Propose a rule ( December 2012), allow a comment period, revise the rule, allow more comments, propose a final rule, and vote on it.

They don't exempt volunteer firefighters at all; they do the right thing and revise the rules surrounding volunteers being counted as employees so that no similar volunteer-staffed "businesses" would be subject to the unfair law that one group made the news about. They fixed the law, instead of just writing in a loophole to benefit a single supporter.

Amazing the difference between what is supposed to happen under law, and what Obama chooses to do time and again, huh?