You may associate the U.S. Chamber of Commerce with backward, regressive policies on health care and tort, both vital issues to people suffering asbestos-related diseases, such as mesothelioma. But there is another U.S. Chamber of Commerce with very different views.
The U.S. Women’s Chamber of Commerce represents 500,000 members, mostly small business owners who say their businesses are “suffocating” under the weight of rising health care costs. The USWCC recently published a position paper on health care (pdf alert) that advocates:
- Guaranteed, affordable health insurance coverage without discrimination for age, gender, ethnicity, economic level, region, and health status for all Americans, plus a requirement that all Americans obtain such coverage.
- Health Insurance Exchanges to help people find their best insurance options.
- Allowing small businesses to obtain coverage for employees at negotiated bulk rates through purchasing pools.
- A robust government-led public plan to take on the insurance carriers, provide vigorous competition, and assure all Americans have access to affordable health insurance.
The USWCC doesn’t seem to have taken a position on tort reform, one way or another.
What’s most interesting to me about the USWCC’s position paper is that it lays out in stark terms the way the current health care “system” is killing small business. This is not the story we’re getting from Republicans and other opposed to government-led reform. Fingers are wagged at us, and we are told sternly that health care reform will hurt small business and small business is the biggest creator of jobs therefore health care reform will cost jobs therefore (inhale) you don’t really want it.
In fact, the “regular” U.S. Chamber of Commerce is running an ad that claims “A ‘pay-or-play’ employer mandate would force employers to accommodate the new costs of providing health insurance by cutting jobs.” “Pay or play” refers to a proposal that all but the very smallest companies be required either to offer health insurance benefits to employees or pay an assessment that would help finance some alternative source of health insurance. Along with this small business owners would receive tax breaks to help offset the costs of insurance. Still, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce says “pay or play” would be ruinous.
But the USWCC says:
“Over the last nine years health insurance premiums for businesses have increased nearly five times faster than inflation and four times faster than wage growth. …
“…The net result to our American economy caused by the explosion in healthcare costs is lower outputs, less job growth, less innovation, suppressed wages, and probable employer discrimination. High health insurance costs are forcing employers to delaying wage growth, hiring, capital spending, product development and marketing thereby suppressing business growth.”
Via Mike Hall of the AFL-CIO news blog, the Institute for America’s Future argues that a “pay or play” option, if properly thought out and implemented, would not result in significant job losses. “Most likely there will be significant job gains. At the very worst, job losses would represent a few hundredths of one percent of employed workers,” it says.
It seems to me that conservatives these days are mostly engaged in telling America what it can’t have and can’t do. The insurance industry tells us it can’t stay in business unless it can refuse coverage to people with preexisting conditions or dump people whose illnesses are just getting way too expensive. But we’re not to have a public insurance option, we’re told, because it would cost too much money and be bad for business (i.e., the private insurance industry). If we try to come up with a plan that would help build up the employee-based insurance option, we’re told that would be bad for business, too.
But doing nothing also is bad for business. In the meantime, increasing numbers of Americans are unable to obtain health insurance, and conservatives seem to have no plan at all for helping them other than to chant “free market free markets free markets.” Brilliant.
