While the legislature is in session, the National Federation of Independent Business/California will be profiling anti-small business bills and the adverse effect they would have on California’s job creators. This is the second column of that series.
"I’m from the government and I’m here to help." Just hearing those words strikes fear in the hearts of hardworking small business owners everywhere. In California it is especially frightening, given the number of onerous regulations, soaring costs, and other burdens that are regularly heaped upon the plates of small businesses. Add to that the financial crisis facing the state with foreclosed homes, rising unemployment, and a growing state deficit, and government is not seen as a savior by most right now.
So in the middle of all this our legislature is once again considering yet another "law of unintended consequences", Senate Bill 810 (Leno), which would turn over our already-stressed healthcare system to an incapable, if not absentee, caretaker: our state government bureaucracy.
It seems that many of our elected leaders either fail to read the daily news that tells us we are enduring an historic economic disaster, or they simply assume that if they make enough sneaky attempts at introducing bad policy, eventually their legislative colleagues and the Governor might let it slide by.
Make no mistake: SB 810 would create a new, massive, government-run healthcare system for California that would absolutely have the opposite effect on the very people its proponents intend to help.
It is important to note that health care has been the number one concern among small business owners for the past twenty years, according to a number of NFIB surveys. A few statistics show why:
- Small employers, which provide coverage to about 68 million people, have seen their health insurance costs increase 113 percent since 1999.
- From 2000 to 2005, the median cost of health insurance relative to payroll increased 43.5 percent for businesses with fewer than 25 employees.
- Employees in the nation’s smallest firms pay an average of 18 percent more in health insurance premiums for the same benefits than those in the largest firms.
Unlike larger businesses, labor unions and government bureaucracy, small businesses don’t have the finances, staff or other resources at their disposal to make health care easy to obtain. But the sad irony is that small businesses end up footing most of the bill within this troubled system. So, it is patently false to assume that small business owners aren’t feeling the pain of healthcare and don’t want reform, or that they can afford healthcare and choose not to provide it. They simply can’t afford it, but they do want to find solutions that make sense for Main Street, California and America.
The problem with SB 810 is that it makes a broken healthcare system even worse by putting it into the hands of an equally, if not more, broken government system. The question California taxpayers and small business owners must ask is this: "Are we truly confident that the very leaders that got us into this current financial mess through overspending would manage our healthcare system with any greater level of precision or care?"
Our elected officials – most of whom have had never had any hands-on small business experience – have not run our government like a successful business. Instead, they have overspent us into a multimillion dollar deficit (that is continuing to grow), and have mismanaged and neglected their important priorities to keep our state solvent and functional. Nothing gives us any indication that they are in the process of righting their wrongs and changing their out-of-control behavior.
These leaders simply don’t have a good track record of running government efficiently, and government-run health care doesn’t have a good track record of working successfully for those it intends to help the most – the taxpaying consumer.
One only has to look to the north – to Canada, where a single-payer system is in effect, people are simply not getting the services they deserve:
- The percentage of middle-aged Canadian women who have never had a mammogram is double the U.S. rate;
- The percentage of Canadian women who have never had a pap smear is triple the U.S. rate;
- More than 8 in 10 males have never had a PSA test for prostate cancer, compared to less than half of males in the U.S.; and
- More than 9 in 10 Canadians have never had a colonoscopy, compared with 7 in 10 in the U.S.
And these differences in screening alone may explain why U.S. cancer patients do better than their Canadian counterparts:
- The mortality rate for breast cancer is 25 percent higher, for prostate cancer 18 percent higher, and for colorectal cancer 13 percent higher in Canada than it is in the U.S.
As for costs, despite oft-stated statistics, the cost differences between American and Canadian systems are almost certainly overstated. The costs of American healthcare include sizable administrative costs, such as billing and collection, that are absent in Canada. But in reality, Canada doesn’t eliminate these costs; it merely shifts them into a tax-collection system. So, at the end of the day, Canadian taxpayers are, in fact, forced to pay out-of-pocket for these services.
The author and supporters of SB 810 will attempt to lead Californians to believe that it is in the best interest of our state to give all Californians more equitable and affordable healthcare, but ironically it is a government-run system – especially in California – that would actually have the reverse effect and deprive important care to those who really need it the most.
Is simply adding more money to a problem and creating more of a bureaucracy, as SB 810 would do, really the answer? We need to look at this problem holistically and not in a vacuum. Real and long-lasting comprehensive reform requires much more than just throwing money at an unworkable system. The system need changes – changes that include affordable health insurance options, a menu of choices when it comes to doctors and accountability and transparency in the system.
NIFB and small business owners believe that everyone should have the ability to access quality and affordable healthcare, but as we develop long-lasting approaches, we need to do it within a competitive framework in which no large bureaucracy is telling us what to do, but instead where we are able to make responsible choices in a free and competitive market.
It is never a good time to create new layers of government that have the potential to raise costs, but as our state and country struggle through this current recession, SB 810 is especially painful and misguided.