Ask the Expert: Peter Harbage on Small Businesses and Health Insurance

How are small businesses affected by rising health insurance costs?

Small businesses face the challenge everyday of trying to provide health insurance to their employees. As a small business, they have to manage their costs, and they see their healthcare costs rise every year. If they happen to have a year where an employee becomes ill, they can see their costs skyrocket as the insurance company tries to makeup for the costs of providing care to that one employee. So small businesses are significantly disadvantaged in today’s economy, and health care reform could help address that.

Would health care reform help small business?

The part of the economy that is going to be the most helped by health reform is small business. Today we have a system where small business owners are not only supposed to know their trade but they are supposed to understand the complexities of the health insurance market. Health reform can help ease that burden by simplifying the rules and making the rules more fair for small business.

It is also the case that small businesses see their costs go up every year, much faster, sometimes, than even the growth in their business. What health care reform will do is make health care more affordable and they can have both higher profits and higher wages.

Are there particular measures that a health reform bill should include to ensure help for small businesses?

There are a couple of critical things that health reform should do that people are already talking about to help small business. One is to create an insurance exchange where small business can have a choice of both a public plan option and private plans that are laid out on an equal playing field. Health reform also needs to make sure that subsidies are available to help small business afford the high cost of health insurance so that they can actually purchase it for their employees. With those two steps, we can create a system that will work far better than the one way have today for business.