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| Small Business Owners Want Choice of a Public Health Insurance Plan |
In the Taking the Pulse of Main Street
report, small business owners demonstrated strong support for
choice of a public health insurance plan as an alternative to private insurance. At a time
when health insurers are challenging President Obama’s call for a
public coverage option,
small business support for a public health insurance alternative may prove critical to
advancing real health reform.
By
a decisive margin of over two to one (59 percent to 26 percent, with 14
percent undecided), surveyed small business owners preferred a proposal
with choice of a public health insurance alternative over a proposal
with expanded private market options.
Why do small businesses
support the public health insurance option so strongly? The experience of Susie
Taylor, part-owner of TNT Software in Vancouver, Washington, is
telling. Taylor’s company provides health insurance to its 13
employees, but has been increasingly squeezed year after year. “We’re
at the mercy of the health insurance providers,” Taylor sad in an article in The Columbian.
“Sole proprietors who have maybe five part-time employees can’t even
afford to cover themselves. We’re going to have to do something.”
Across
the nation, other small business owners echo Taylor’s sentiment:
they’re tired of being held hostage by private insurance companies that
treat them like a captive audience – jacking up rates every year and
refusing to cover claims at their own whim. Like Taylor, other
small business owners are concluding that the only way to break this
pattern is to create a public alternative that gives those who are
frustrated with the insurance industry’s business model another option.
And
they’re not alone. Policy experts and Members of Congress are
also advocating for a public health insurance option. In a recent New York Times article,
Jacob Hacker, a professor of political science at the University of
California, Berkeley said, “Public insurance has a better track record
than private insurance when it comes to reining in costs while
preserving access to care. The public plan would set a standard against
which private plans must compete.”
In the same article,
Representative Pete Stark of California, Chairman of the Ways and Means
Subcommittee on Health, said, “Many of the private plans are poorly
managed. They are the General Motors of medical care delivery.”
As
Congress turns its attention to health care reform this spring, and
especially as insurance industry lobbyists plan their offensive to
prevent the creation of a public health insurance option that would spell new
competition for the private companies they represent, the voices of
small business owners will need to be heard. If you have a story
about why you support choice of a public health insurance plan, let us know! |
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