Health Care Concensus Emerges Against Mandates
Jun 8th, 2009 | By Dawn R. Rivers | Category: Politics & PolicyLast week, the House Committee on Small Business held a hearing with the cleverly descriptive title “Common Ground: Finding Consensus on Health Reform, the Small Business Perspective.” Everybody else in Washington has been talking about health care reform lately, why not the House Small Business Committee? They even had a piece of proposed legislation to discuss, except that they didn’t. Discuss it, I mean. What they did talk about was what small business owners liked about the health care reform proposals being bandied about the Capitol, and what they didn’t like.
Pooling mechanisms, tax credits and wellness programs were among the ideas that most of the small business owner witnesses liked, while employee coverage mandates and the public health option emerged as the big no-nos. Several of the witnesses had no hesitation in declaring that mandated insurance coverage would cause their firms to either cut jobs, pull back on hiring plans or close their doors entirely. Republican members of the panel also continually encouraged small business witnesses to voice their opposition to a government-run health care program, which they did energetically. It is notable that not much was said about microbusinesses and almost no mention was made of the special needs of nonemployers (the self-employed) at all. Will 76% of U.S. firms wind up left out in the cold? We’ll see.
