State-Regulated Health Insurance Bad Business
by Andy Thompson, www.mariettatimes.com
The Ohio House of Representatives recently passed a budget bill that included yet another mandate for state-regulated health insurance plans – a mandate that falls squarely on the backs of the small business and individual policy holders that are already struggling with higher costs than other insured groups (self-insured companies, government plans and union-negotiated contracts are exempt from these mandates due to federal ERISA exemptions).
As a small business owner (Bird Watcher’s Digest) and member of the National Federation of Independent Business, I am working each day to provide the best benefit package possible for my employees. Mandates like these are making it cost prohibitive for businesses like mine to offer any benefit package at all.
State Representative Jennifer Garrison and others in the Ohio House Democrat Leadership had an opportunity to stop this expensive and unfair mandate by supporting an amendment that would have removed it from the budget bill. Many NFIB members (including me) contacted her office to urge her to do just that. Unfortunately for Ohio’s small businesses, their employees and their families, Garrison voted against the amendment and for higher health insurance premiums.
Raising costs on small business in a stagnant economy is absolutely the wrong prescription for a state that is bleeding jobs; small business creates more than 70 percent of all new jobs in Ohio.
If this mandate stands, small businesses and their employees will pay more for health insurance coverage they may never use and big health insurance companies will gladly pocket the higher premiums. It will be a sad day indeed for Ohio and for those small business employees who will face the prospect of losing their insurance or perhaps even their jobs.
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