Ohio Economy Needs Small Business and Small Business Needs Single-Payer

      Small business and the self-employed are driving Ohio’s growing service economy to everyone’s advantage, providing jobs for their communities, paying wages to their neighbors, and creating income and tax revenues that stay in the local area. Our economy needs these small businesses to help generate the recovery from the continued disastrous loss of our manufacturing base. The single largest obstacle to the success of small business operators is the prohibitive cost of providing health care coverage for themselves and their employees, and the inability to gauge future costs. Competitive wages, safe and reasonable working conditions and health care coverage are central to mutually beneficial relationships between employers and employees. These relationships were typical of collective bargaining between unions and companies, and are once again possible on a broader scale thanks to the Health Care for All Ohioans Act.  

     At the root of successful employer/employee cooperation is the elimination of adversarial conditions that pit workers against owners, as is the situation with rising, unaffordable health care costs, currently the main point of contention in every bargaining situation. For the self-employed, who are providing health care coverage for themselves and their families without the benefit of real collectives, The Health Care for All Ohioans Act provides immediate relief by creating access to comprehensive, affordable healthcare with a fixed, fair, progressive gross receipts tax. For businesses that primarily generate their receipts through service labor provided, the savings are dramatic. For many the resulting savings can then be reinvested in the business, increasing revenue and creating jobs with no increase in costs over that of privately provided for-profit coverage. For small businesses with payrolls, in addition to the gross receipts tax, the funding formula of the Health Care for All Ohioans Act provides for an affordable, fixed, progressive employer-paid payroll tax that increases only as payrolls increase. Successful businessmen and women know that increased revenues and increased payrolls can result in increased profits.

     We have dug the healthcare hole very deep, the solution will be expensive and no one wants cheap healthcare anyway, only accessible, affordable healthcare coverage. It is time for bold, innovative steps to solve this problem that will affect every one of us eventually.  For the first time businesses will have the opportunity to determine their future healthcare costs due to the fixed rates of the funding formula. Ask a business person if they would support a plan that would allow them to project their healthcare costs for the next five years, even taking into account possible increased initial cost.  The answer you will get is a resounding, YES!  Businesses prefer steady financial forecasts, workers prefer job security and job creation over day to day employment, and all parties prefer a mutually beneficial, respectful relationship. Predictable healthcare costs encourage business to grow, workers to thrive and collective bargaining to be successful. The Health Care for All Ohioans Act is a winner for us all.