Small business owners are desperate for health care reform, according to a survey released this week by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. In fact more than one in three small business owners who provide some health benefits for their employees list the rising cost of health care as their top concern.
Small business owners generally agree that providing health benefits is the best way to retain good employees, but the costs involved threaten the success of their enterprise. Health care reform could save the cost of retraining caused by high rates of employee turnover, they said.
More than four in 10 surveyed said they think health care should top the agenda in the next administration and session of Congress.
In a press statement, Risa Lavizzo-Mourey, president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, noted that "Many small business owners have already reduced their health benefits and asked employees to pay a larger share of the premium, and still they struggle with the ever-increasing costs."
Health care advocates believe that in worsening economic times, eliminating health care benefits will only increase the number of uninsured and force more and more working families to choose between medical care and paying other mounting bills.
Despite a broad consensus on the need to fix it, solutions for the broken health care system varied, the survey found. Almost eight in 10 small business owners surveyed said they would support a reform package that combines government-sponsored purchasing pools to allow small businesses to purchase insurance at negotiated bulk rates, along with tax credits to make offering insurance more affordable for small businesses.
More than half supported the so-called "pay or play" option. This concept requires employers with 10 or more employees who do not provide health coverage to pay four percent of their payroll to help cover the uninsured.
While there was support for privatization and other schemes that impose the heaviest costs on individuals, more than half of small business owners also expressed support for offering public plans and private plans to employees, paid for by repealing Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. Small business owners in the majority favored requiring insurance companies to cover individuals regardless of age or pre-existing conditions.
The survey did not ask small employers about expanding existing public plans like Medicare to cover everyone. Such a proposal has been introduced in Congress as the United States National Health Insurance Act (H.R. 676), authored by Rep. John Conyers (D-MI). This plan would provide complete coverage for all and would be paid for through an increase in Medicare taxes, which for business currently trying to pay insurance premiums would likely be a savings.
