Coleman optimistic about small business health care options
By Rae Kruger
POSTED: April 26, 2008
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“We’ve got a shot,” Coleman said after a morning presentation at the Marshall Area YMCA. “If we don’t get it done by November, we will get it after January.”
Coleman, R-Minn., is optimistic because of the bipartisan Senate work on the small business health options program, or SHOP.
Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and small business committee ranking member Sen. Olympia Snow, R-Maine, and Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., are sponsoring the bill will Coleman.
SHOP will increase the ability of small businesses to offer health insurance to employees, Coleman said.
More small employers are finding it difficult to provide health insurance to employees.
We all pay for people who do not have health insurance, Coleman said.
A under-insured or uninsured person with high blood pressure may not visit a doctor but could have a stroke, and that stroke costs more than the preventative trips to the doctor, Coleman said.
One way to reduce the cost of health care insurance is to increase the pool of insured businesses in an insurance plan, Coleman said.
Small businesses need access to more insurance pools, which spreads the costs of coverage throughout more members, Coleman said.
The plan maintains private providers.
“I’m a believer in the private market,” Coleman said.
“Increasing the pool is critical,” Coleman said. The bipartisan work and input from others resulted in a pool compromise, Coleman said.
SHOP will encourage statewide insurance pools and nationwide insurance pools. Statewide pools may have more mandated coverage than a nationwide pool, Coleman said, and some wanted to maintain that option.
More pools means employers would have more purchasing options, more health plan options and other options they could select to save money and be able to offer health insurance to employees, Coleman said.
SHOP would also offer qualified employers a $1,000 tax credit for contributions to employee premiums.
“I like the idea of keeping it independent (of government),” Marshall real estate firm owner Steve Strautz said. “I don’t think we need government insurance.”
Strautz also told Coleman the tax credits available to employers made sense.
Kris Gruhot of D & G Excavating in Marshall said she liked Coleman’s ideas.
When she and her husband bought the company last year, “the first thing we tried to do was beef up the benefits.”
Gruhot said health savings accounts were a big part of reversing a trend of higher insurance costs passed on to employees and reduced numbers of employees on the insurance plan. HSAs allow employees to make more choices about doctors used, pharmacies used and other medical choices, Gruhot said.
“Allowing individuals to participate in their health insurance choices (is critical),” Gruhot said.
Coleman agreed that health savings accounts can be part of reducing overall health care costs and “what we are doing is consistent with that.”
And SHOP is not the cure for what ails health care cost and access, Coleman said.
Coleman said Avera Marshall Regional Medical Center Chief Executive Officer and President Mary Maertens highlighted the other challenges.
Maertens said Friday morning that Coleman’s work to reduce costs to small businesses was needed, but the federal government also needed to help make sure employees in those businesses had access to doctors and medical services.
The federal government is considering a 10 percent reduction in payments to medical service providers, Maertens said.
A cut like that makes it tough to provide medical services, Maertens said.
“We’re gonna fix that,” Coleman said of the proposed cut. “You can have the best insurance in the world, but if you don’t have access and can’t get treatment and don’t have the physicians, what does that mean?”
