It is time that we take control and find a way to curtail the explosive costs of health care. Small businesses deserve a chance to channel these funds toward other needs, such as expanding and creating more jobs for the economy.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
It's time to level the playing field for small business owners and give them the same health care choices that large corporations have. Because they don't have as many employees, they have little ability to negotiate lower rates.
Small businesses pay 18 percent more than big businesses for health care, the same health care, just because they're small and they have too small a pool of risk.
Having started and owned two small businesses, I know what a challenge it is to keep up with the rising costs of your employees' healthcare premiums.
It is time to maximize and prioritize our health care dollars.
We spend a great deal of our energy making sure that small businesses have help in navigating to the outcomes that they want.
We have a duty to ensure that patients don't have to worry whether they'll be dropped from their coverage if they get sick. Small business owners shouldn't have to break the bank to provide coverage to their employees. And families should not be forced into bankruptcy because of a medical crisis.
We ought to be incentivizing people to save more of their own money for use taking care of their healthcare expenses, and what we have done is we have set it up where health savings accounts are harder and harder to use for narrower and narrower purposes.
I understand that in these difficult economic times, the potential for any additional expense is not welcomed by American businesses. But in the long run, the health insurance reform law promises to cut health-care costs for U.S. businesses, not expand them.
We must get government out of the way and help foster an environment where small businesses are free to grow and create jobs.
The American economy has always been driven by the entrepreneurial nature of its citizens, and blocking access to affordable health care will only suffocate growth within the small business sector of our economy.