Looking at Healthcare Insurance Head On

02/10/2007

Paul Munnis

When Hillary Clinton took the podium of the U.S. Senate floor to advocate for her husbands Universal Healthcare Plan she had my attention. As a small business owner I wanted to get coverage for my employees but could not afford it. I was hoping the U.S. government would offer a healthcare option to every American.

A few days later Ted Kennedy stood up on the same podium and said flatly that any businessman who didn’t buy health insurance coverage for his workers would go to jail. I was astounded.

The next week I had a Rotary Club breakfast and compared notes with fellow businessmen. They were as alarmed as I was. Few of us could afford the health coverage and none of us wanted to go to jail.

Almost on the spot a new company was formed to act as a pooling agent for small businesses, a Blue Cross Plan was bought for those employees and the new company became the owners of the employees and leased them back to us small businessmen.

Within 60 days some 1800 employees of small businesses in my small town were on the payroll of this new company and all could buy affordable healthcare for themselves at a good discount. Restaurants, contractors, banks, and others bought into the pool. I set up the computer network, installed the administrative software, and then trained the employees of the new company in the use of the software. Not a paycheck was missed.

For 19% over cost the new company handled all payroll plus they provided all HR services for us on an outsourcing basis. They also took over the hiring and firing of workers. That was an affordable and sensible business proposition in a State that did not have “at will” employment.

So today I checked out John Edwards’ plan for Universal Healthcare and the first premise and requirement that he has is that all small businesses must provide healthcare for their workers. It would be a matter of law.

At that point John Edwards fell of my radar as a candidate just as Hillary died way back when. This is hard for a Democrat to admit to yet it’s the truth.

So far Hilary has been sparse on the details of her plan. If it requires businesses to solve governments problem in providing healthcare insurance then you can bet she will become a “has-been candidate.”

What most businessmen want is not a mandate to buy health insurance for their workers but a Federal Government system set up that takes over the complete responsibility for family healthcare. Keep your tax credits. Keep the problems of health coverage. Don’t fop it off on businessmen. If Democrats want to eliminate all the tax loopholes and credits that go with employee health insurance then good riddance to them – they just complicate taxes anyhow.

This attitude prevails in large, medium, and small businesses. The healthcare of a nation is seen as a shared personal and government responsibility not as a business responsibility. In most other advanced nations of the world this is the case - government provides and administers the health insurance program.

Government is large and by forming large insurance pools they can get terrific discounts on insurance by spreading risk. They have a lot of money and can form their own risk pool and put up the needed capital to underwrite national health insurance. Medicare and Medicaid provide government with the tools needed to administer healthcare accounts.

It really doesn’t seem too complicated. Use the tax system to collect the payments, subsidize where appropriate, administer thru Medicare. This is not rocket science. It’s not socialized medicine either.

Instead people like Kennedy and Edwards want to fill up our jails with recalcitrant or errant businessmen and hire bizzilions of bureaucrats to administer the jailing of our American businessmen.

They will not get elected that way.

We Democrats need to get this right because if we lose this opportunity it will not be good for any of us as a nation or as a Party. Get business out of the loop.