Manzullo urges Congress to reduce health care costs

House Small Business Committee Chairman Don Manzullo (R-IL) said surging health care costs continue to squeeze the U.S.'s small employers, and Congress must act quickly to prevent many more workers from joining the ranks of the country's 45 million uninsured.

Manzullo hosted a full committee hearing March 2 to promote several legislative options to reduce skyrocketing health care costs. Manzullo noted that 60 percent of the U.S.'s uninsured are small business owners, their employees, and their families, who can't afford health care coverage. As a result, just 63 percent of small firms offer health insurance to their employees.

"Our small employers—the innovators and job creators of our economy—are drowning in escalating health insurance costs. They face the horrible prospect of canceling health insurance for their employees, their families, and their children in order to stay in business," Manzullo said. "It is a crisis that threatens to leave many more U.S. workers without the security of basic health care, and Congress must act immediately to provide options to small employers to harness the surging costs."

Witnesses at the hearing discussed several legislative options before Congress to lower health care costs in America including:

• Association Health Plans (AHPs), which would allow small businesses to band together through trade groups, such as the National Federation of Independent Business, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the National Restaurant Association, and negotiate on behalf of their employees and their families at lower rates.
• Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) that allow small business owners to offer more affordable high-deductible health insurance plans to their employees and make tax-deductible contributions to employee savings accounts to allow their employees to build equity and assume personal control of their health care needs. Legislation before Congress would make the high-deductible insurance plans tax deductible.
• Small business tax deductions for health care expenses. Self-employed workers pay their full 15.3 percent payroll tax (Social Security and Medicare) on top of their individual income tax. The Self-Employed Health Care Affordability Act of 2003, authored by Congressman Manzullo, would allow those small business owners to deduct their health insurance costs from their payroll taxes, effectively reducing their health care costs by more than 15 percent.

"Congress must ensure there are many different health insurance options for small business owners to utilize," Manzullo said. "We must help our small employers attract and keep employees, and nothing helps more than the ability to provide affordable, high-quality health insurance."