Bush Pushes Small Business Health Care Reform

Bush Pushes Small Business Health Care Reform

In a speech today in Texas, Bush again pushed his two main plans for lowering outrageous health care costs for small business owners. Over 44 million Americans are without health care and more than half of them are employees or operators of small businesses.

The first cost reduction strategy that Bush is supporting are the formation of health savings accounts. The upside of health savings accounts is they will take some burden off the employer.

What concerns me most about the HSAs is: Where is this money going to come from?

NO answer from Mr. President. NO straight answer from anybody, really.

Where is the money going to go?

That one’s easy. It’s going to Wall Street probably right next door to your future Social Security Fund if a number of bankers and brokerage houses get their way. Bush didn’t support the two most expensive campaigns in history with money from his own HSA. I suggest you “Take a look at it,” as our commander in chief likes to say.

The second scheme for reducing small business health care costs are association health plans, or AHPs. In case you’re not already familiar with this health care cost reduction strategy it allows “small businesses to pool risk across jurisdictional boundries.”

It’s real interesting this one because he’s spot on. It’s the crossing of jurisdictional boundries that’s going to lower the costs. Over the last couple decades thousands of local and state mandates have sent the health care requirements skyrocketing. Unfortunately some of those mandates include, for example, coverage of medical equipment and supplies like insulin for diabetics.

If your small business associates with another one in a region with few requirements, odds are your coverage requirements will be a lot less stringent as well. Which is fine, so long as you don’t have diabetes and never develop an ongoing medical condition.

Thank you White House for once again finding cheap fixes to serious issues, and kudos for managing to line supporter’s pockets while you’re at it.