Health Reform for Small Business: Burden or Blessing?

Can’t find it right now, but I recently got a piece of campaign mail that claims the health care reform act puts “onerous requirements on small business.” And the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is running an ad that slams a Colorado Congresswoman who voted for the act, “crushing small businesses with billions in penalties.”

Politifact pretty well debunks that claim by pointing out:

-       Businesses with fewer than 25 employees will not be required to offer health insurance or penalized for not doing so.

-       But if they do, many will be eligible for tax credits to offset the costs. Those credits are available now. Here’s more information from the IRS. 

Okay, there’s some paperwork involved. (Isn’t there always?) But on the whole, it seems to me that this bill should be a boon to small business.

If they aren’t providing health insurance to their employees now – and many of them aren’t – I don’t think it’s because they don’t want to. It’s because escalating prices have made it impossible.

The Customers Insurance Companies Don't Want

From 2007 through 2009, our four biggest health insurance companies refused to sell policies to one of every seven applicants … on account of pre-existing medical conditions.

These were people who didn’t have access to group plans, who attempted to buy coverage on their own. (An estimated 15.7 million American adults are covered by individual policies.) In the three years mentioned above, these four companies rejected 651,000 potential new customers. One company had a list of 425 diagnoses that could be used as grounds for refusal.

During the same period, the companies denied 212,800 claims from customers who had “exclusions” on their existing policies.

Early Medical Adventures

When I was three years old, I survived cancer: a rare type of kidney tumor found only in children. My chances, in 1959, were not good. But my doctors gave it everything they had. They removed the right kidney, sewed up the hole that went halfway around my torso, and followed up with radiation. It worked. I'm still here. And I still have the scar to remind me.

Several years ago, my mother was cleaning her attic and found the receipt for that hospital bill.

It was $1,000. Today, that kind of money might not even get you in the door. In 1959, it paid for a major operation, nine days in the hospital, 40 radiation treatments, and heaven knows how many doctors and nurses and lab technicians.

And for that, our health insurance company kicked me off the family policy.