Health Reform and Small Business

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The impact on small businesses has become a flashpoint in the increasingly raucous debate over health care reform. Trade associations are charging that the pending bills — which would require all businesses to provide coverage to their employees or pay a penalty — would place a huge financial burden on their members. Republican leaders are doing their best to inflame the fears and opposition of small business owners.

These proprietors would be wise to ignore the rhetoric and take a closer look. A vast majority of small businesses and their workers are likely to benefit greatly. They should be supporting, not opposing, reform.

It is a little recognized fact that some 70 percent of uninsured Americans come from families with one or two full-time workers. Most of those workers are employed by small businesses that don’t offer them health benefits or offer coverage that they can’t afford.

Small businesses would reap substantial benefits if their employees were insured. Their work forces would likely become healthier, and they would have an easier time attracting or holding talented employees. Even more striking, with health care reform, small firms could buy insurance at substantially lower rates. Lobbyists issue dire warnings that small businesses won’t have the money to pay for coverage or to pay the penalties and will have to eliminate a huge number of jobs: more than one million under an early House bill, according to the National Federation of Independent Business.

Such fears are grossly overblown.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/13/opinion/13thu1.html?th&emc=th