Senate Panel Reviews Small Business Health Costs
Nov 9th, 2009 | By Dawn R. Rivers | Category: Politics & PolicyIn its way, it’s kind of funny that so many members of Congress have suddenly become indignant about the plight of small businesses in the health insurance marketplace when the small business owners themselves (as well as both Small Business Committees) have been jumping up and down and yelling about that very thing for decades. Last week, a few days before the House passed its health reform measure, the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) held a hearing to look into increasing health costs facing small businesses, descriptively entitled “Increasing Health Costs Facing Small Businesses.”
The witnesses included a representative state insurance commissioner (who enacted the role of insurance industry apologist), an actuary, and a couple of health care economists/policy wonks from the pro and the con side. There were even a couple of actual small business owners invited to testify. The small business owners, in typical pragmatic fashion, were fairly non-partisan in their approach to their remarks. One of them said that reform efforts need to include creating a better product and lowering costs, while the other begged lawmakers to get the burden of providing health insurance off the backs of small business owners altogether. In the end, since none of the insurance companies invited to testify accepted that invitation, Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-IA) announced that he was launching an investigation into industry policies and practices. Whether that investigation will be concluded before the Senate votes on a health reform bill is questionable.
