More than 46 million people in the U.S. do not have health insurance. Premiums have skyrocketed 119 percent since 2001. The number of small-business owners providing health insurance to their employees has dropped from 67 percent in 1995 to 38 percent in 2008. The U.S. health care system is broken.
Reforming how health care is delivered in the U.S. is critical to the success of small business—something NSBA has been saying for years. In fact, in 2004, and previously in 1993, NSBA poured enormous resources into developing a proposal for broad health care reform. Meeting with small-business owners, benefit managers, insurance providers, Congressional staff, think-tank experts and leaders of small-business organizations throughout the country for more than a year, NSBA arrived at a proposal that will reduce health care costs while improving quality, bring about a fair sharing of health care costs, and focus on the empowerment and responsibility of individual health care consumers.
According to NSBA’s 2008 Year End Economic Report, nearly half of small-business owners ranked the cost of health insurance as the most significant challenge to the future growth and survival of their business. Over the past decade, reforming the U.S. health care system has been the ranked the number one or number two top priority for small business, yet it continues to be shelved. Despite the potential political mine-field associated with any broad health care reform, President Barack Obama recently stated that this is the year health care reform will be addressed. As the primary deliverer of health insurance, business owners know all too well that broad reforms are an urgent need—we cannot continue down the path we’re on now.
The cost of health care is quickly becoming a barrier to many considering opening their own business. Given the state of the U.S. economy where lay-offs are a daily occurrence, and the fact that small business creates the overwhelming majority of new jobs and innovations, policymakers must do all they can to ensure that entrepreneurship remains a viable option, including removing barriers such as the hugely burdensome cost of health care.
On behalf of NSBA, we welcome you to our new site, HealthReformToday.org. America’s small-business community stands ready to work with lawmakers and other stakeholders in moving forward on health care reform, an issue of importance to every employer and worker across the country.
Todd O. McCracken
President, NSBA
Keith Ashmus
Chairman, NSBA
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