By Joe Parko / Chronicle contributor
With more than 28 million uninsured Americans working for small businesses, according to the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), access to affordable health care is now a top priority for small business owners. The organization stated that health care premiums for small businesses are on average 18 percent higher than those of large businesses and this disparity is restricting small businesses' ability to invest and grow.
These small business owners are concerned and are saying that the rising health care costs is the primary issue confronting their businesses. The average growth of health care premiums for small business owners was between 20-24% in 2008 and that was on top of the more than 15 percent average increases the year before, and the year before that.
Health care reform is no longer a matter of debate and discussion. It is a matter of necessity for the survival of the American small business owner.
The Republican Party has long claimed the title as the party that champions the small business owner and yet for decades the Republican Party has misinformed, misrepresented, and convinced small business owners to vote against their economic interests. Instead the Republican Party has consistently advocated for their big corporate interests and financial backers at the expense of the small business owner. The outsourcing of jobs and labor costs to foreign countries, the advocacy for foreign tax shelter credits for large multi-national companies, and the do-nothing attitude for exploding health care costs in this country have put the small business owner in the most precarious financial position in decades.
Small business owners all across America are demanding health care reform that will make their business more competitive and less handicapped in finding good qualified employees that would otherwise go to larger companies that can provide health care benefits at costs on an average of 18% cheaper than small businesses. But the private for-profit health insurance cabal doesn't want competition from the public option plan that is currently being proposed in Congress and they are spending hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying Congress to protect their enormous profits. They have a monopoly — like stranglehold on a product that most people are too afraid to go without and they know people will give up just about anything other than food, water, and shelter to keep their health care.
The best argument for overhauling our ridiculously expensive and dysfunctional health care system is that fixing it would put more dollars in your pocket, even if you already have health coverage.
If there's enough pressure on Congress, we'll add a well-designed public insurance option to give people a real choice. We'd end up with a very large insurance pool that would lower costs through efficiencies of scale. The plan would be able to drive a hard bargain with providers and cut down on overhead costs, which amount to about 30 percent of health care spending in the U.S. right now.
And it wouldn't just contain costs. A publicly administered insurance program would also protect Americans from the kind of health insurance nightmares we hear about so frequently, with families bankrupted by out-of-pocket expenses or stuck in jobs they hate in order to hold on to their insurance.
A recent survey of small businesses in Tennessee conducted by Vanderbilt University found that 73% said everyone should have a choice between public and private plans.
Yet in spite of the fact that polls show that most Americans want a public plan the Republican continue to demand that the public option should not be included in any health care reform. This is nothing more than a smoke screen by the Republicans to protect their largest campaign contributors in the private health care industry and pharmaceutical industry.
Small businesses provide most of the jobs in America. If our small businesses suffer because of out-of-control health care costs, then the American economy will suffer. Every small business owner and employee needs to tell Congress that they want a public health care option.
