Local Small Business: “If I Ran My Business the Way Health Care Does, I’d Have to Shut My Doors”

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Consumer Group Report Shows Small Businesses Struggling With Rising Health Care Costs

WISPIRG

La Crosse, WI Oct. 8, 2009— Wisconsin small business owners are being crushed by rising health care costs according to a new report released by Wisconsin Public Interest Research Group today.

“Inefficiencies and waste in health care are driving up the costs of coverage for small businesses throughout the state,” said Wisconsin Public Interest Research Group’s Health Care Advocate, Shannon Nelson.  “Our report gathers stories from small business owners across the state, and the problems are always the same: unaffordable policies, insurance company abuses, and an inefficient system drowning in red tape.”

The new report, Small Businesses at Risk, makes clear that small business owners, like Corrie Brekke of La Crosse’s, The Root Note, need health care reform.

“Health care right now is such a problem that if I tried to run my business they way they run theirs, I’d lose all of my customers,” Brekke said.

In an event releasing the report, Brekke used her own business to demonstrate leading health care problems:

• In the health care system, premiums have doubled over the last ten years, and they’re set to double again over the next eight.  If Brekke’s prices had been going up like health care costs over the last decade, a simple latte would cost $5.71 today.  And customers would be shelling out $10.48 by 2016.

• In the health care system, getting medical care often means running around a parade of specialists, with no one doctor helping to coordinate everything.  In Brekke’s business, she would just hand out coffee beans and a cup and refer her customers out to other people to get a grinder and milk.

• Insurers can decide they won’t cover some customers for pre-existing conditions.  If Brekke tried that in her business, she wouldn’t sell a latte to customers who had burned their tongues on hot beverages in the past.

“In any other business, consumers wouldn’t tolerate these sky-high prices, rampant inefficiencies, and customer abuses without walking out,” concluded Nelson.  “But lack of competition and skewed incentives have turned our health care system into a nightmare.  It’s time for Congress to pass strong reforms, including a public health insurance option, to lower costs and rein in these insurers.”