At a press conference today, House Republican Leader John Boehner talked about the importance of helping small businesses create jobs to get the economy going again (see his “leader alert” here). Nice thought.

There’s just one problem: health care is one of the top issues small businesses need addressed so we can do our part for economic recovery – and Boehner is standing square in the way of real health reform. His political grandstanding against health care reform is, simply put, bad for small business.

Every day, small businesses are being forced to drop health coverage, lay off employees or shut their doors for good because of rising health care costs. Without reform, small business health care costs will more than double over the next ten years – we’ll pay close to $2.4 trillion in health care costs between now and 2018. That’s money small businesses could be using to create the jobs to jumpstart the economy.

Health reform needs to include 4 critical elements to control costs, expand choice and make health coverage affordable for small businesses:

• A national health insurance exchange will promote transparency and new choices.
• A competitive public health insurance plan will give small businesses new leverage, drive down costs, and inject new competition that forces insurers to compete around cost and quality.
• Insurance market reforms will stop insurers from denying care and end discrimination against small groups based on health status and gender.
• Affordability measures, including tax credits for small businesses and subsidies for employees, will finally make health coverage affordable for smaller businesses and employees.

These elements are essential to make health care work for Main Street. The House proposal, HR 3200, includes these measures. The merger of the Senate HELP and Finance bills should, too.

The cost of failing to fix our broken health care system this year is a cost we can’t afford. It’s time for Congress to stand up for Main Street, not K Street and the insurance industry lobbyists, and pass real health care reform now. In the end it’s the action – not the thought – that counts.
 

Filed under: National by admin 2 Comments »
Posted: October 14, 2009 at 2:13 pm