American Small Business Needs Health Care Reform
Politicians of both political parties routinely pay lip service to small business as the engine of both innovation and economic development. In practice, very little of what they do supports it. Big corporate dinosaurs have been bailed out form problems directly of their own making. Even the bailout recipients are still allowed to hand out millions in bonuses for short term excesses that actually contribute to long-term failure.
Small business owners, on the other hand, are more likely to take a long-term view. That is, if making the next payroll doesn’t overrule all other considerations. Not only are we (yes, I am a small business owner) not eligible for bailouts, but the bailouts handed out to the financial institutions that caused the current recession under the pretence that “we need to keep credit flowing” have not kept the credit flowing for small businesses.
We like to think of the US as the world capital of small business success. However, a recent report “An International Comparison of Small Business Employment”, points out that, among developed countries, the United States is actually has one of the “smallest small business sectors, as a proportion of total national employment”. One of the reasons for this is the lack of universal health care in the US. This chains employees to their cubicles. It makes it harder for small businesses to compete for talent. It makes it impossible for creative entrepreneurs with existing medical conditions to strike out on their own, unless they have a spouse with a large company health plan.
A vast majority of new jobs are created by small businesses, and those new jobs are much more likely to be created locally, rather than outsourced around the world. New jobs are what we need right now. Wall Street seems to be back on its feet (largely thanks to government-backed fire sales that have greatly reduced competition in what was already an oligopoly), but Main Street is still hurting.
American Small Business needs to have the health care worries of the current system lifted off the backs of its owners and employees. That would be adding to freedom, not talking it away.
