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This week the Senate debated my bill to make health insurance affordable for America’s small businesses. After a decade of stalemate discussions, we’re finally on the verge of passing legislation that will help a million working Americans afford health insurance.
There’s an affordability crisis in healthcare today—45 million people don’t have health insurance in America. If you’re like me, you’ve heard that statistic so many times by now that it’s starting to feel numb to us. But we can’t let that happen.
45 million people translates to about one out of six Americans. I’d like to put a face to that figure and start bringing some feeling back to the state of health insurance coverage in the United States.
If the 45 million uninsured Americans held hands and formed a chain between New York City and Los Angeles, they’d not only stretch the entire distance, they’d be able to go back and forth from coast to coast 14 times.
We can no longer wait to help this unbelievable number of people have health insurance. It’s time to start increasing the number of insured people in our country.
And this bill does just that. It’s projected that S. 1955 will make health insurance affordable for one million working Americans. And that’s a sizeable start to the process of providing health insurance to the one in six without it.
The ratio of small businesses without health insurance is even worse. In Nebraska, two-thirds of small businesses can’t afford to provide health benefits to their employees.
Nearly every week since becoming Nebraska’s Senator, I’ve heard from these small business owners that can no longer afford health care for themselves and their employees.
Health care premiums are experiencing double-digit growth annually and small businesses can’t keep up with the costs. Since 2000, group premiums for family coverage have grown nearly 60 percent.
If we don’t do something to help small businesses cope with the costs of health care, soon we will have an entire workforce without health insurance coverage.
By allowing business and trade association to band their members together and offer group health coverage on a national or statewide basis, we’ll be making an important stride in making health insurance affordable for Americans.
I believe in this legislation because it’s the first health benefits legislation to get both sides – the business folks and the insurance folks – working together.
I know that concerns have been raised about this bill. And each time I’ve been approached by a group or constituent with a concern, I’ve listened and tried to work together again to strengthen this bill and its hopes for making health insurance affordable for America’s small businesses.
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