A growing number of small-business owners say that controlling health care costs is a top priority, and it is the number one policy that they have contacted their elected officials about, a new study showed.
According to the National Small Business Association’s annual Politics of Small Business Survey, 40 percent of the surveyed owners said health care costs was the top issue they raised most with elected officials. Local issues were second on the list at 28 percent and tax reform came third with 37 percent.
This is unsurprising considering that the Trump administration and Republican allies have been been trying to dismantle Obamacare for nearly two years.
But this has been a problem for years. A 2017 report from the Kaiser Family Foundation showed that small businesses continued to face cost increases for group health insurance.
The survey found that annual group health insurance premiums for businesses with fewer than 200 employees totaled $6,486 for single coverage and $17,615 for family coverage.
That’s a slight increase over the annual premiums of $6,429 for single coverage and $17,546 for family coverage in 2016. Overall, premiums for all group health insurance policies have increased 19 percent since 2012.
Another 2016 study, done by NFIB, the nation’s leading small business advocacy organization, revealed that health insurance costs for small firms had risen 56 percent in the previous decade, an increase outpacing wages and inflation. The report stated that rising health insurance costs were becoming so unaffordable for many small-business owners that some owners were terminating their employer-sponsored
health insurance program and delaying or prohibiting non-offering firms from offering the benefit.
The trend was reflected in the declining in the percent of firms offering health insurance from 42 percent in 2004 to 29 percent in 2016.
To understand more about how our healthcare system is hurting small businesses, watch “Fix it: Healthcare At The Tipping Point.” It shows how our dysfunctional health care system is damaging our economy, suffocating our businesses, discouraging physicians and negatively impacting on the nation’s health, while remaining un-affordable for a third of our citizens.
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