Talk Radio News Service: News, Politics, Media

By Ravi Bhatia-Talk Radio News Service

Small business owners testified in front of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Tuesday in an attempt by the committee to find methods for reducing the ever-increasing health insurance costs facing small businesses.

“Today, I’m announcing my own investigation into the pricing practices of health insurance companies that sell policies to small businesses,” said Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), HELP Committee Chairman. “Health insurance companies should open their books, explain to the American people why they support a health insurance market for small businesses that is so dysfunctional and so lacking in transparency.”

Harkin argued that the legislation presented by the Senate would create health insurance exchanges that pool small business together and increase competition, also making health insurance more transparent.

“Small businesses pay 18 percent more then large businesses for exactly same insurance plan and coverage. The [exact] same policy,” he said.

Art Cullen, editor of the Storm Lake Times in Storm Lake, Iowa, accepted a $5,000 deductible on services provided by a hospital in order to keep costs manageable for his small business. The deductible forces cancer patients covered by the policy to pay $2,500 out-of-pocket for a shot at a local hospital - or to drive to the next town in order to pay $25 for the same shot at a clinic. The insurance prices, he said, drive down the potential revenue that the town could have earned from treating the patient at the local hospital.

“We need more insurance competition in the rural marketplace by knocking down state cartels,” he said. “We need to know that a single health catastrophe will not bankrupt us and bring down everything we have worked for over the past 20 years.”

Kansas Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger, Chair of the National Assn. of Insurance Commissioners, said that the cost of health care is rising rapidly and that insurance companies have little ability to address the issues.

“The challenge moving forward will be to overhaul the delivery system to promote prevention, quality and results-based care to encourage healthy lifestyles and to eliminate waste and fraud in the system,” said Praeger. “The difficulties in the small group market, as in the individual market, are ultimately the result of medical spending that has outstripped the ability of most Americans to pay for it.”