The United States is a country dedicated to the principles of free trade, the freedom of businesses to rise, grow, and mature, to employ the nation’s citizens, to use its infrastructure, and to profit. Business is the lifeblood of the American way of life, a way of life that Americans have defended with blood, sweat, and tears. In exchange for this exalted position, business has been required to pay taxes, but also to provide health care plans for their employees. Until recently, the cost of health care plans for employees have seriously reduced the employer’s bottom line, especially those of small businesses. With the passage of the health care reform bill of 2010, small businesses will be given help to meet this responsibility, and still be able to make a profit.

Assigning to business the provision of health care plans for their employees was the country’s way of affirming that many people become ill as a result of working hard, that businesses ‘use up’ these people, and that businesses have a moral responsibility to care for their employees, some of whom virtually give up their lives for the company’s goals. Teddy Roosevelt expressed this understanding when he castigated business for “throwing back upon the community the human wreckage due to its wear and tear.” For him, and as it turned out, for the nation, business could meet its responsibility to its employees and to the nation by providing insured health care.

In the future, robots might well run the whole enterprise, but for now, businesses require people to achieve their business goals. It’s also true that work does takes its toll on humans, on their bodies, minds, and family life. Before business was assigned the responsibility of providing health care plans for their employees, the money paid to the employee was regarded as compensation for both the work performed and the cost to the employee’s health. That changed, as the impact of work on the employee became clearer, and the dependence of business on the employee  was no longer understated. Eventually, compensation for labor was no longer strictly defined by a paycheck; fair compensation came to include health insurance. Today,  its no longer just an expectation; health insurance in now our national law.

The United States health care reform bill of 2010 requires businesses employing 50  persons or more to provide health insurance to their employees. However, this provision doesn’t take effect until 2014, four years from now. In the meantime, to encourage business to provide health care coverage for their employees now, small businesses will receive tax credit incentives if they do. This will enable small businesses to achieve a better bottom line than they currently enjoy, due to the high cost of medical insurance, including their group health care plans.

Whether the rationale for assigning health care coverage to businesses today is valid or not, business has been irrevocably assigned the task. At least you can be sure your competitors are having their profits reduced by the same health care expense. They’re not going to have the extra profit to spend on quality improvement any more than you are. Quality products and services are what made the U.S. the great economic power that it was. Quality employees are a significant factor in creating quality products and services. Finding and training good employees can be expensive. Inexpensive, but comprehensive health care plans can be used as an enticement for getting and keeping quality employees. Your employees will, at some point, get sick. Without medical treatment, they could be absent a long time or could even die. Getting them healthy as quickly as possible and keeping them alive, as crude as it may sound, increases the probability that your company will continue to provide the quality products or services that keep your profits high. The burden may be hard, although there are also some benefits to be gained. However, the real prize of providing health care plans is in being not only a profitable company, but a noble one.

Tags: health care plans

During President Obama’s campaign, as he went throughout the country extolling the virtues of health care reform, a plumber stood up and declared he could not possibly do business if he were forced to buy one of the packaged health insurance for small businesses then available. The plumber, who was actually an unlicensed plumber (in my state, if you’re not licensed, you’re not a plumber), said he had obtained funding to start his own plumbing business, but if he were required to buy health insurance for his employees, he couldn’t afford to go into business after all. The Republicans latched on to this character’s story to argue against Obama’s proposals for universal health care coverage, but the argument went nowhere, Obama won, and by 2010, a health care reform bill was signed. As it turned out, unless Joe the plumber intended to have 50 or more employees, he would not have to provide health insurance for his employees.

Joe the plumber wasn’t trying to deny the responsibility of business to supply health insurance plans to the employee. It’s been an acceptable practice for decades and embraced by conservatives and liberals alike. Business itself has met their responsibility with exuberance and dignity all these decades, taking lesser profits in order to do it. Currently, 98 percent of companies with 200 or more employees provide health care insurance plans for their employees. About 150 million Americans are employer insured, and that number is expected to grow to 159 million by 2019. The new Health Reform Law continues to rely on business to provide working Americans with the health insurance they need.

Health insurance for small businesses is not as inexpensive as health insurance for businesses with 200 or more employees. This is because insurers give discounts based on the number of people to be insured. Naturally, a larger organization will be able to obtain those hefty discounts while smaller businesses can’t. This gives  something of a competitive advantage to larger business: because they can offer prospective employees health insurance as a benefit and the small businesses  can’t, the best talent goes to the bigger guys. The small business, unable to offer health insurance, also suffers a greater turnover of employees as they tend to leave the business for larger ones able to provide health insurance. Lacking what other workers of equal caliber get, small business employees are more demoralized. Being unable to afford health insurance for small businesses makes doing business as a small business a hard proposition indeed.

Now, small business is in luck. The Health Reform Law is enabling small businesses,  with as few as 25 employees, to get health insurance for small businesses this year (2010) by providing taxes credits for those who do. In addition, the law provides for the building of medical insurance exchanges throughout the country. These exchanges will represent hundreds, thousands, or millions of individuals and small businesses as a group to insurers. It’s the large numbers that have given large corporations leverage to get those lower premiums for their employees. Now, individuals and small business owners with their employees will be counted as a group under the exchange and be eligible for those nicely affordable group rates.

The exchanges are still in the initial stage of development - not ready yet. Expect to see them functioning by 2014. Then, small businesses with 50 or more employees will be required to provide insurance to their employees. Hopefully, these exchanges will make health insurance for small businesses as cheap as it is for the big guys, and give the small businesses an opportunity to attract those valuable, highly skilled employees. There’s an answer for most social issues, Joe the Plumber. All you have to do is seek and you’ll find.

Tags: health insurance for small businesses, health insurance