House Committee Looks First At Health Care
Feb 9th, 2009 | By Dawn R. Rivers | Category: Politics & PolicyI know I’ve said this before — although not since the word has become the political slogan of the White House — but the more things change the more they stay the same. Last week, the House Small Business Committee held a hearing to examine the perpetual problems small business owners have with the thorny issue of access to affordable health insurance. There were no startling revelations made by a panel of witnesses that included small business owners, trade organization representatives and, in the interests of fairness no doubt, a spokesperson for Blue Cross. What was most interesting about the hearing, as was the case during last week’s roundtable before the Senate Small Business Committee, the sudden awareness of and concern about microbusinesses.
Microbusiness-specific representation was ably handled by Michael Beene, Senior Health Advisor for the National Association for the Self-Employed (NASE). Beene was able to give the Committee a lot of information from the NASE’s member surveys and, perhaps most importantly, he reminded Committee Members that the needs of microbusinesses with respect to health care reform may be very different from the needs of a 200-employee small business. It was also interesting that, when the equally thorny question of mandated health care coverage came up, Chairwoman Velázquez specifically asked panelists about the impact of such mandates on microbusinesses. Obviously, there is a great deal of work still to be done on the issue of health insurance coverage. For the moment, at least, Capitol Hill seems to be waking up to microbusinesses and that is a critical and long-awaited first step.
