Chicago Sun-Times
April 3, 2009

Small business owners have joined the chorus of Americans seeking lower health insurance costs and health-care reform. Suffocating under the high cost of providing care to their employees, they are forced to lay off longtime staff, cut or eliminate benefits, or even close their doors. If nothing is done to reform the current system, the cost of health care will increase 20 percent before 2016.
A recent National Small Business Association survey found that while most business owners want to offer health care to their workers, only 38 percent are able to, down from 67 percent in 1995.

One of the most effective ways to contain rising costs without reducing benefits or access to care is to give families and businesses the ability to choose between a public health insurance program and a private insurance company. Such a Medicare-like option would foster competition with private insurers whose premiums and co-payments have soared beyond the reach of many Americans and their businesses.

Offering a choice between a public health-care option and private insurance plans will breed competition. Estimates suggest that premiums for a public health-care option would be at least 20 percent less than the private insurance industry average. As a result, private insurance companies would have an incentive to compete and be encouraged to increase efficiency, while decreasing overhead costs.

Over the past 19 years, small business has been responsible for 93.5 percent of all new jobs, creating nearly 4,000 jobs per day. However, small business job creation has slowed as many entrepreneurs are turning away from the idea of opening their own business because the cost of providing health insurance is too great. The casualties of this retreat are the needed jobs that aren't created in every state and every sector of the economy.

Throughout the country, small businesses are having a hard time now, not only coping with the economic downturn, but trying to compete with businesses in countries with quality public health-care systems. For instance, a small business in Japan, operating with the benefit of a quality public health-care system, spends only 4 percent of its payroll on health care. A similar firm in the United States will spend nearly 13 percent of its payroll on health insurance every year, tying up money that could be spent on hiring new employees or improving products.

At the White House Health Care Summit on March 5, participants discussed a public health-care option that would decrease costs and improve access to care. And President Obama included health-care reform in the federal budget, Blueprint for Change, that Congress voted on Thursday.

Over the next several months, Congress will work to complete the monumental task of reforming our health-care system. If we are successful in achieving the reform that I support, we will grow our economy, and relief will come to the small business community and the millions of Americans who are uninsured.