COVERAGE: Bipartisan Bill Addresses Small Business' Concerns

Left, right and center know that more than 80 percent of small businesses owners say finding affordable health care is a challenge. But lawmakers have been stalemated for years about a solution. Four senators took a bipartisan step forward today offering a bill called SHOP - the Small Business Health Options Program.

Senators Richard Durbin (D-Il), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), and Norm Coleman (R-MN) introduced the latest policy proposal designed to increase access to affordable, quality health insurance for small businesses. Just 59 percent of small businesses offered any health coverage to their workers in 2007, and fewer than half of very small businesses (9 workers or less) did.

Under the Small Business Health Options Program or SHOP:

• States would be required, over time, to eliminate medical underwriting (i.e. charging sick people higher premiums) in their small group markets.
• A new national small group marketplace would allow small businesses to access nationwide plans in addition to state specific packages.
• Small employers who choose to offer insurance would be awarded tax credits based on firm size and their contribution on behalf of their employees. NOTE: Businesses would not be eligible for the tax credits if their state fails to enact additional insurance market reforms (limits on how much insurance premiums can vary) specified in the legislation.

As many of you may remember, state benefit mandates were a serious point of contention during the Association Health Plan (AHP) discussion in 2006 (and numerous similar debates stretching back years). Under SHOP, state plans would follow their own state's benefit mandates, but the national ones would offer a benefit package to be developed by the Institute of Medicine.

More than half of our nation's uninsured are self employed or work in firms with less than 100 employees. Small employers don't have access to the economies of scale, robust risk pools, and choice of insurance products that large employers enjoy.

We are always happy to see bipartisan action on the health reform front and look forward to working with the small business community to develop a sustainable system of coverage for all Americans.