Courtney Pushes Health Cost Initiative, The Day

Courtney Pushes Health Cost Initiative

Legislation would help self-employed and small businesses afford insurance

The Day

By Lee Howard

Published on 6/11/2008

U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, joined a bipartisan panel in Washington, D.C., Tuesday to argue for passage of legislation aimed at lowering the cost of health care insurance for small businesses and the self-employed.

Courtney, speaking at a Capitol Hill press conference, said the legislation targets a segment of the health care system that is most broken and should improve the lot of the estimated 47 million Americans who spend some portion of a given year without insurance.

The Small Business Health Options Program - known as the SHOP Act - would allow small businesses and the self-employed to band together to lower insurance premiums. Joining different types of businesses into one pool allows insurers to spread risks over varied populations and should provide lower average premiums than would have been available under a previously introduced bill aimed at the same problem, supporters say.

U.S. Rep. Ron Kind, D-Wisc., led the half-hour session that allowed only a few questions from reporters, many of whom attended by teleconference.

”It's clearly one of the most important issues facing business today,” said Kind, who was among the sponsors of the House version of the bill, which closely resembled the Senate's legislation, introduced by Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., and Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine.

To get a feel for the problem, supporters released these statistics:

¦ 28.7 percent of the 13.5 million people working for small businesses (with fewer than 100 employees) are uninsured. About 27 percent of the 3.8 million self-employed people are uninsured.

¦ The average annual health-insurance costs for people employed by small businesses (with fewer than 200 employees) last year was $4,553 for singles and $11,835 for families.

¦ Businesses that employ fewer than 200 employees are increasingly less likely to offer health coverage. Such coverage fell from 68 percent of all firms eight years ago to 59 percent last year.

Supporters called the SHOP Act an incremental change, not a step toward national health insurance. They have said that it's up to the next president to decide how to implement a national health care strategy.

The legislation is backed by an interesting coalition of labor and business, including the National Association of Realtors, the AARP and the Service Employees International Union.

Todd Stottlemyer, president and chief executive of the 16-million-member National Federation of Independent Businesses, pointed out that small companies pay an average of 20 percent more for their health care plans than larger firms.

A representative of the national Realtors association said 25 percent of real-estate agents, who are independent contractors, lack health insurance.

Many of the bill's supporters praised the bipartisan support the legislation has received.

”If you want to do anything about health care, it has got to be bipartisan,” Stottlemyer said.