Universal Health Care for Healthy US Business

Here is the outline of an argument for universal health-care in the US that might appeal to your more business-oriented, Republican types, demonstrating that universal health-care can be good for capitalism.

Business is good. More business is better. Big business is good; small business is great.

Small businesses (<500 employees) employ lots of people, about half of all private-sector employees.*

Getting a health-insurance plan for your very-small-business employees is very difficult. Insurance brokers don't like to provide health plans for fewer than about 15 employees. Only about half of all businesses with fewer than 10 employees offer health-insurance benefits. But the smallest businesses, those with fewer than 20 employees, employ almost 20% of those private-sector employees (double that for those in both the 20–100 range and the 100-500 range). That's a lot of small businesses — about 99% of all businesses (by number).

Thus, there are about 5.5 million little businesses with fewer than 20 employees, and a substantial portion of those have fewer than 10 employees, and they're all worried about finding insurance for their employees and how to cover costs that keep rising faster than their profits.

Please remember that pretty much every huge business started out as a small business–mighty oaks from tiny acorns, and all that.

As the SBA notes:

According to a National Federation of Independent Business membership survey, the cost and availability of health insurance are a top small business issue.

I hope the syllogism is clear by now:

Competitiveness, anyone?
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*Small Business Administration, Frequently Asked Questions.

Posted on November 29, 2007 at 19.41 by jns · Permalink
In: All, Current Events

2 Responses

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  1. Written by rightsaidfred
    on Friday, 30 November 2007 at 16.04
    Permalink

    **you will end up with more healthy and vibrant small companies, struggling with fewer non-business concerns, on their way to growing into big, mighty capitalist-friendly companies.**

    You seem to use "health care" and "health insurance" interchangeably in your post. The distinction is alert worthy.

    Health insurance is expensive because health care is expensive. One attraction of universal care is that the cost burden will be spread amongst all people (well, sort of), thus lowering the burden on the current payers, since many young and healthy chose to go without health insurance, thus driving up rates for those in the system.

    The high cost of health care is still there. The economy as a whole is not necessarily better off: some will pay less, some will pay more. Some individual businesses will be better off, some will face a higher tax burden to support the wonderful universal health care system of the United States of America on the planet earth in the year ____.

  2. Written by Melanie
    on Tuesday, 11 December 2007 at 13.22
    Permalink

    As a Canadian, I have to say that universal health care is a right that I am very, very grateful for. I can't imagine running a small business in the US and having to take care of getting insurance for my employees as well as all the other agonies of business ownership.

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