WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 – As the House Finance Committee takes up health care reform legislation this week, it is absolutely crucial for lawmakers to hear what small business owners are saying:
• Small businesses are being hurt by rising health costs
• Small business owners feel like they are being left out of the debate.
These are the two main findings of a recent report from U.S. Public Interest Research Group, which shows clearly that small business owners want and need health reform. The consumer group just re-released The Small Business Dilemma to coincide with the Senate Finance Committee’s work considering amendments that affect small businesses.
U.S. PIRG, this week could be crucial to winning over this key constituency, even as headlines focus on the larger fight over the public plan.
“In this economy,” said U.S. PIRG’s Health Care Advocate, Larry McNeely, “health care costs are killing small business owners. They deserve a better deal.”
While the initial Finance Committee proposal fails to fully implement key insurance market reforms for small businesses until 2018, Senator Olympia Snowe (R-ME) has offered an amendment to accelerate small business-friendly insurance reforms.
That kind of legislation would help small business owners and managers like Nancy Glick, of Dalmo Optical in Pittsburg, PA.
“It gets harder and harder to provide health insurance for employees, especially when the biggest businesses can negotiate a reasonable rate but small businesses, like us, can’t,” Glick told U.S. PIRG recently.
“The insurance companies are dictating what to charge us. This money is taking away from our family, our kids’ college education, and our food,” she added.
The Small Business Dilemma finds that many small businesses want health reform. Researchers surveyed 309 small business owners and managers around the country for the snapshot survey. They found the following:
The costs and administrative hassles associated with offering insurance weigh particularly heavily on small businesses. ?
Small businesses value health insurance as a key to business success because it allows them to attract better employees.
Some 78 percent of small business owners surveyed who do not offer coverage would like to do so.
Some 80 percent of those who would like to offer coverage cite the expense of coverage as a reason why they don’t.
Only 24 percent feel the interests of small businesses are being recognized in the current health reform debate.
“For health insurance reform to work, it has to work for small businesses,” concluded McNeely. “This survey leaves no doubt about what entrepreneurs need to see: cost-saving reforms that make health care affordable. It’s up to the Finance Committee to listen to what they’re saying.”
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U.S. PIRG, federation of state Public Interest Research Groups, is a non-profit, non-partisan public interest advocacy organization. For more information visit http://www.uspirg.org
For more on U.S. PIRG’s health care reform campaign, click here.
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