|
|
| |
| Fri, Sep. 5, 2008 |  |
 |
|
||
| |
Small business owners share concerns about health care system Friday, May 2, 2008 By Jason Wiest Arkansas News Bureau LITTLE ROCK - Carolyn Hamm is scared to death that her gallbladder is going to explode. The owner and sole employee of Carolyn's Keyboard Corner in Little Rock pays $520 in health insurance premiums every month, but her insurance company refuses to pay for her medication, saying her gallstone problem is a pre-existing condition that her policy does not cover. Hamm said she was told that after a year, that pre-existing condition classification would be dropped. It wasn't. "You just get tired of getting taken to the cleaners every time you turn around," Hamm said. Hamm and other small business owners from Arkansas voiced their frustrations with the nation's health care system Thursday to representatives of the National Federation of Independent Business, who promised to share their stories with lawmakers in Washington, D.C. The roundtable discussion was the third in a series of "Fix-It Forums" planned nationwide. "There's a lot of consistency in what we're hearing around the country from small business owners," NFIB President Todd Stottlemyer said. "They treat their employees like family members, they want to be able to provide health insurance or provide a contribution for health insurance, they're just having a heck of a hard time doing it right now because of the cost." Despite his employees not having any major injuries, insurance costs have increased "logarithmically," Laser Tools Inc. President Joe Wortsmith said. Affordability is one of 10 principles for health care reform for which the NFIB is lobbying. "The small business owner doesn't have the tax advantages of the big business, doesn't have the regulatory advantage of the big business, and again it's the small businesses in America who are creating the majority of jobs, who are the heart and soul of our economy," Stottlemyer said. Small business produces roughly half of the private Gross Domestic Product and creates, on average, about two-thirds of net new jobs annually, according to NFIB. U.S. Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., is backing legislation supported by the organization that would combine annual tax credits up to $2,000 per worker for small-business owners and $3,600 for the self-employed with state and federally based insurance pools designed to spread risk for insurers and reduce premiums for workers. The measure also limits insurers' ability to use patients' medical histories to exclude them or drastically increase their premiums. Stottlemyer said he is hopeful the reform NFIB is pushing will come about under a new president. One in three small business owners will make health care the issue they vote on in the upcoming presidential election, according to the NFIB's data. "This is very much on the minds of small business owners who say they're going to vote on this issue in November," Stottlemyer said. |
