Health Care Reform

Floor Speech

HEALTH CARE REFORM -- (Senate - November 18, 2009)

Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, as the former owner and manager of a small retail business, I know very personally what it is like to worry about meeting the payroll, about whether you can pay for the inventory to keep your business going, about complying with the myriad of regulations you have to comply with.

As a former Governor, I certainly understand it is business and not government that creates jobs and drives new ideas and innovation. But I also know that government has a vital role to play in addressing the challenges businesses and small businesses face, especially in these very difficult economic times. One of those challenges small businesses are struggling with is the high cost of health care.

In New Hampshire, between 2002 and 2006, small businesses paid 42 percent more in premiums for health insurance for their employees; and for our smallest businesses, those with fewer than 10 employees, the increase was almost double that--a 71-percent increase in the cost of premiums.

So what does that mean for the small businesses and their employees who want health care? It means small businesses have to make the tough decision to either drop coverage for their workers or to increase the employee contributions, often to the point where their workers cannot afford coverage.

Everywhere I go in New Hampshire, I hear from small business owners who tell me about these tough decisions they face. I heard this concern from Adria Bagshaw who testified this summer at a Small Business Committee field hearing Senator Snowe and I did in Portsmouth, NH. Adria and her husband Aaron own the W.H. Bagshaw Company, a fifth-generation family manufacturing company in Nashua, NH. They offer health insurance to their 18 employees and cover a portion of the monthly premium for them. But with those premiums at $1,100 per month per family, they spent more on health insurance for the first half of this year than they spent on the raw materials they need to make their products at their manufacturing company. Understandably, Adria worries they are going to need to cut back on the quality of health insurance plans they offer their employees or the amount the company covers to help pay for those premiums.

I have also heard from people such as Chick Colony who is a small business owner in Harrisville, NH. He has a wonderful weaving company that has been in Harrisville for generations. He e-mailed me, saying:

The cost of health insurance is the biggest problem that our small ..... business faces.

They have 24 employees. He went on to say:

The present system is expensive, inefficient and broken. I can't tell you how the 20 to 35 percent annual rate increases depress us all and there is no end in sight. Over the past five years, most of our employees have had to drop coverage because they simply can't afford to pay their share of the premium. I really believe that the time has come to put the existing system out of its misery.

Certainly we hope we can do that.

I have also heard from Kevin Boyarsky, who is an owner of a small printing company in Concord. He told me:

Health insurance premiums have gone up 30 percent last year and 22 percent the year before. It's now a very big item in our company's budget. We want to grow and be competitive, but the high costs make it hard. From a small business perspective, I can't attract employees without good coverage, but if I hire you now, I'll only be able to offer you 50 percent of the individual plan. It's all I can afford and it isn't very attractive to employees.

Small businesses in New Hampshire and across the country are burdened by high premiums for health insurance. In fact, statistics show us that small businesses pay, on average, 18 percent more than large plans for the same insurance policy. And for small businesses that do not offer their employees health insurance, they cite the high cost of premiums as the reason why.

We need comprehensive health reform to help these small businesses. The small business owners I have spoken with want to offer insurance to their employees, both because they believe it is not only the right thing to do, but it is critical to being competitive, to recruiting and retaining good employees. But as they so often tell me, the high cost of insurance stands in their way.

Health reform is critical to these folks. We can help them by passing comprehensive insurance reforms that rein in health care premiums, so it stabilizes costs, and provide tax credits to small businesses to help them afford the cost of health insurance. I believe we must take these measures to help level the playing field for small businesses and to make insurance premiums more affordable.

Small businesses are the backbone of our economy. That is where most of the jobs in this country are created. We have to control health care costs to relieve the financial burden, so that so many of these small businesses in New Hampshire and across the country no longer have to face the choice of whether they can keep health insurance or hire employees.

I urge all of my colleagues to work together so we can pass comprehensive health reform legislation. We need to pass it, and we need to pass it soon.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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