Why business should demand single-payer health care
(Online Oct 17, 2017)
By Eric Leenson & Dan Geiger, co-founders, Business Alliance for a Healthy California
The powerhouse of America’s economy — small business — is being sabotaged. Yes, sabotaged — not by taxes, but by our health care system.
Take it from Warren Buffett, chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, who referred to our health care system as “the tapeworm of American economic competitiveness.” He asserts that medical costs harm the economy much more than taxes, and he and Berkshire’s vice chairman Charlie Munger (a Republican) favor a single-payer solution, sometimes referred to as “Medicare-for-all.
Small businesses are a huge sector of the California economy, representing more than 99 percent of all state businesses and providing jobs for 6.8 million, nearly half of all California’s private employees.
Yet small businesses are among the most negatively impacted by our nation’s health care system’s runaway costs and corporate insurance system. Private businesses spent $637 billion on private health insurance in 2015 and are projected to spend more than $1 trillion by 2025. Healthcare costs represent more than 17 percent of U.S. GDP, significantly higher than any country in the world.
In California, a solution is on the table now — the proposed Healthy California Act (Senate Bill 562) — which will be taken up again when the Legislature reconvenes in January. SB 562 provides superior benefits to businesses and households than those currently on offer, and will dramatically reduce expenses for small businesses. With Medicare-for-all, no company, individual or household would pay premiums, deductibles or co-pays — at all, and everyone is covered.
