Current Campaign: Small Business for Affordable Healthcare

Small Business for Guaranteed Affordable Healthcare

Businesses Need Comprehensive Healthcare Reform

As demonstrated by survey after survey, the lack of affordable healthcare is the single biggest problem faced by America’s 25 million small business owners as well as their employees who represent 52% of the private sector workforce.

• More than 27 million small business employees are uninsured, including millions of freelancers and sole proprietors who are completely shut out of the employer-based healthcare system.
• According to a recent study by the Kaiser Family Foundation, only 59% of businesses with under 200 employees provide health insurance -- only 45% for firms with under 10 employees.
• According to a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute, only 40% of private sector workers at firms of under 100 employees are covered by employer-based insurance.
• According to a nationwide survey of small business owners by Small Business Majority, 87% rank healthcare as either extremely important (65%) or very important (22%).

Our present healthcare system impedes our economic progress and hampers the pursuit of the American Dream by its citizens. The success or failure of a business venture should depend upon innovation, product quality and hard work – not the cost of providing, or not providing, health insurance.

Small Business Owners Support Healthcare Reform

• Most small business owners want healthcare reform. In 2006, Small Business Majority conducted a national survey of small business owners And in 2007, SBM conducted a comprehensive, groundbreaking poll on small business healthcare attitudes in California -- health insurance premiums in the California small group market rose 53% between 2003 and 2006 – 125% since 1999. The situation is similar in other states.

A small sample of the results:

• 63% of small business owners nationally support a government sponsored national health insurance system (this is supported by results in other surveys).
• 57% percent of small business owners in California regard healthcare financing as a shared responsibility among individuals, employers and government – three times as many as those who do not (19%).
• 80% of small businesses owners in California who expressed an opinion agree that employers should pay something to provide healthcare to their employees.
• A substantial plurality (near-majority) of small business owners in California support comprehensive healthcare reform measures that include, among other things, substantial employer coverage mandates.

Small business support for healthcare reform has been further amplified by a recent Gallup poll showing that 59% of the nation's small business owners believe that the current U.S. healthcare system needs a complete overall, and 49% support the idea of a taxpayer-funded national health insurance program.

Small Business Support is Essential to Achieve Healthcare Reform

The policy and political hurdles to achieving comprehensive healthcare reform are significant. Without active small business participation, the likelihood of success is slim, at best. A major turning point in the 1993-94 healthcare debate came when leading small business organizations turned against the reform proposals. Many state reform proposals have met similar fates.

Moreover, as demonstrated by recent research commissioned by the Herndon Alliance, one of the most effective attacks on healthcare reform is the perception by the general public that it will hurt small business. The research further makes it clear that healthcare advocates can not speak credibly for small business; the voice must come directly from small business owners themselves.

Not only does small business opposition to reform need to be blunted, but an active, vigorous small business voice in favor of reform must be mobilized and unleashed.

Small Business Organizations Have Traditionally Opposed Healthcare Reform

Despite the healthcare crisis faced by most entrepreneurs, the leading national and statewide small business organizations have continued reflexively to oppose most attempts at healthcare reform, based upon an ideology that disdains government intervention into markets, even when those markets have failed and reform is essential to our economic health and the well-being of business owners and their employees.

Small Business Majority

Small Business Majority is the only national small business advocacy organization to recognize the need and opportunity to mobilize small businesses behind guaranteed affordable health care. Over the past two years SBM has established itself as the nation’s leading small business voice for comprehensive healthcare reform.

Principles

We are very pleased that there are now a range of serious healthcare reform proposals being considered at the state level and being proposed nationally. We have not endorsed any one particular solution, but we advocate for changes to the system that ensure:
1. Universality
2. Portability
3. Affordability for all – specifically, a shared, equitable burden across all constituencies, based upon ability to pay
4. Cost reduction -- including elimination of unnecessary expenses and excessive profits
5. Non-discrimination -- based upon health risk or size/type of employer

Unlike most other small business advocacy groups, we support direct government intervention into the healthcare system, including appropriate, equitable taxes, mandates and regulations.

Contact

For further information, please contact John Arensmeyer at (415) 332-4511 or jarensmeyer [at] smallbusinessmajority.org.

Copyright 2007 Small Business Majority