The best way to encourage small businesses is to pay for people's health insurance!

[hedgehog]

Well, someone had to say it!

[yardwork]

1. Yes.

[rucky]

2. Yep. It'll also make them more competitive

in hiring employees who'd rather work for a small business, but needs the benefits that corporations offer.

[LynzM]

14. Absolutely.

I'd much rather work for a small, local company... but trying to find one that has a health plan that'll cover me? (diabetic) Ha!

[treestar]

3. EXACTLY!

And we could eliminate the welfare gap the right always whines about. People staying on welfare because if they got a job, they'd have no health coverage!

[baldguy]

4. I don't want "health insurance" - I want HEALTH CARE!

If there's a corporate profit incentive somewhere then then someone's getting screwed.

[hedgehog]

5. Well, someone had to say that, too!

:)

[sandyd921]

6. Yep! All businesses: big, small, and in-between

will be in a far more competitive position! As someone who has been interested in going out on my own but prevented from doing so by an inability to pay for a private policy, I can attest to the potential benefits for our economy and the entrepreneurial spirit of America!

[Greyhound]

7. The best way to encourage small businesses is to encourage their

formation and nurture their success through $$ and education. The business part is easy and well known, simple things like how to efficiently handle inventory and how to plan for taxes and keeping good books and how to deal with laws and regulations, these are what kills so many small businesses.

Unburdening them from health care expenses would be a good start, but we need more to re-ignite the legendary entrepreneurial spirit. We are heading for a complete collapse of the Amerikan corporate model and they are abandoning this country, we will need something to replace them and to come back and kick their asses in the future.

[Vinca]

8. That's exactly right. While McBush blabbers on about the low

tax rate for businesses in Ireland, the reality is companies move their offices there for the health benefits they don't have to pay. Same with Canada, Mexico and all the other countries we have "free" trade with.

[BattyDem]

9. I don't understand why no one addresses this.

Not just small businesses, but all businesses.

Aren't US businesses at a disadvantage in the global market because of the amount of money they pay for health insurance? Of course their prices will be higher - they have to make up the money somewhere!

They spend a huge amount of money on health insurance for their employees, who often have to pay a weekly fee toward their benefits. Employee wages are stagnant and insurance co-pays are higher. I've lost count of how many people I know that have seen a complete "wage freeze" in their companies and an elimination of bonuses, while their insurance deductibles have doubled or even tripled! Those people have less money to spend, which hurts the economy.

The cost of health insurance is killing the financial health of US businesses and US citizens! It's no longer a question of "do we want socialized medicine or not", it's a question of economic survival. We can't compete in a global market if the profits of US businesses go directly to the insurance companies.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

10. Absolutely. Positively. It would unleash a new wave of American innovation

as people would be freed from keeping jobs they dislike ( and only stay in because they are chained by the benefits)in order to strike out on their own.

It would help small businesses be more competitive with larger ones and the benfit would be to all of us.

[BattyDem]

13. That's a very good point!

:toast:

People stay "chained" to their jobs because they need the benefits. Why would anyone start their own business, especially if they have a family, when they know they'll have to pick up the health insurance costs?

[ramapo]

11. It is a huge cost and discourages start-ups

My company's insurance bill has soared, forcing us to increase employee contributions while requiring higher copays and deductibles. It is a big problem.

I have sometimes considered going off on my own but there is no way that I could afford the cost of private insurance in NJ. Not only is it more expensive, but it provides less coverage (no pharmacy for instance).

At least we're guaranteed coverage here but it comes at a price.

Relieving individuals and businesses of this burden would be a huge boom to the economy.

[Hidden Stillness]

12. A Few More Points

A few more assorted points:

The biggest threat to small business, is big business, encroaching on its territory, taking over its market/customers, stealing or imitating its product line, etc. With the unfair advatage global corporations have, by monopolizing huge areas of the world, having Governmental connections or bribing people, etc., they can undercut local businesses that pay their employees better, make products of better quality, etc., and the smaller individual store, etc., can't compete. For example, when Wal-Mart refused to provide health care to its underpaid employees, and then was found to be signing people up to Medicaid, burdening its Government-run system, and not paying corporate taxes to support it, why was no one from Wal-Mart's top-executive level arrested, or the corporation forced to pay back all the money siphoned out of the Medicaid system?

Lowering taxes does not make businesses hire new employees; there is no relation. The economy is healthiest during times of very high corporate taxation--because then, corporations have such tight profit margins that they have to manage the business wisely, invest in maintaining its own equipment, etc., and research and development, rather than having so much unneeded money, that they invest stupidly, try to monopolize larger and larger segments of the market, buy back the corporate stock, or lobby Governments for disastrous policies that hurt society. The healthiest eras--1950s, etc.--were eras of this type: good-paying, union jobs, high corporate taxes (meaning lower individual taxes), many, many more corporations for every industry, unlike the consolidated situation we have now, etc. High corporate taxes also insulate society against recession better, because corporate taxes go to unemployment insurance, etc., so that system is stronger. Businesses hire new employees when they have so many customers and sales, that the number of employees they now have, can't keep up; very simple.

Get corporate lobbyists out of the system; they only make everything worse. No matter how bad it gets for the auto industry, for example, they always lobby against their own best interests, and for their own short-term greed. No matter how much employer-provided health insurance costs, making American vehicles non-competitive with Japanese, etc., vehicles, the U.S. manufacturers always lobby against universal, Medicare-style health care, which would take the burden off them; they are so anti-Government. They have lobbied for a generation now, to kill gas-mileage improvements, alternative-fuel vehicle development, etc.; if instead of winning every time and shutting everybody else down, they had been forced to improve their vehicles and give people what they wanted, the whole industry would not be completely dying today, because they would not have lost the entire customer base! Now, they will never make up for all the time they lost.

[Bonhomme Richard]

15. Fact. I wouldn't have started my business without my wife's....

policy at her job. Couldn't have done it and that was the biggest hurdle, besides growing balls.