What would health insurance reform do to help small businesses?
While there is currently no final bill, I believe it is critical to provide meaningful assistance for small businesses. Small businesses play a critical role in growing the economy and creating new jobs-in fact, 73% of Arizona businesses are small businesses. However, health care costs have increased 129% for small businesses since 2000. This increase has hit Arizona hard. Only 32% of Arizona small businesses provided health insurance benefits in 2006, down from 50% in 2000. One of the reasons that costs have risen is that the current system rewards large corporations with hundreds or even thousands of employees. This leaves small businesses at a disadvantage. Most small businesses have less than 20 employees, which do not give them much bargaining power. The risk pool is spread over so few people that insurance companies won’t give them competitive rates. A concept that has drawn support from both Democrats and Republicans is the establishment of a health-insurance exchange, in which
