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This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 5th, 2008 at 1:51 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Americans say they are tired of bickering, and those who divide our country with partisan dialogue. Yet Hillary Clinton is still in the presidential race, in part because of hard-hitting advertisements in the Ohio and Texas primaries.
Despite this, it's hard to see how Clinton can get the nomination. Barack Obama is still in the driver's seat in their party, and that's interesting. In the end, the two hopefuls with the most consistent record of appealing to voters in both parties will most likely carry their respective banners in November - Obama and Republican John McCain.
I'm not yet counting out Hillary, but the numbers lead me to ask: Barack Obama and John McCain - who would be the strongest? I'll put my bet on whichever one does the best job of appealing to small business owners and to working women.
National policy is not keeping up with the evolution of the needs of American workers and small businesses. Many small business owners would like to provide Fortune 500 benefits to employees, including quality health care.
Corporate America and Labor Unions can get insurance across state lines with economy of scale and lower costs. Why can't small business owners get the same breaks as large corporations and labor unions?
Can't this be fixed?
Why are small business owners being discriminated against?
What are the positions of the two apparent nominees on this issue?
Small business owners need help now. Who will provide that help? Barack or John? Or, does Hillary have answers dramatic enough to get her the nomination, after all? You tell me…
March 5th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Which candidates understand small business? On the Democrat side: doesn’t matter, neither Hillary nor Obama get it. Most Democrats don’t seem to understand the economic role of small business. They don’t understand the risk/reward balance; therefore they really don’t think making a whole lot of money as a business owner is a good thing. Instead, they invariably want to tax it to death. Oh, over the years there have certainly been some Dems who have championed an occasional, visible bill that benefits small business. But they just can’t seem to get their heads around the idea that what is good for the small business owner is also good for the employees in the long run. I don’t see anything different coming out of either Hillary or Obama, so far.
On the Republican side: There is little doubt that John McCain is a true and selfless leader in good times and bad. What he needs is a running mate that has small (and large) business experience to balance out the ticket. His biggest faux pas that will haunt him until the November election was his vocal opposition to the Bush tax cuts.
March 5th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
I own a company with 65 employees. Our health insurance premiums for each employee went up $145 per employee per month last year for the PPO and $95 for the HSA. We had to change companies and increase deductibles in order to get that increase down and it didn’t go down very much. There are only three or four insurance companies in Texas that would even give us quotes. We feel stuck as well as abused by the insurance industry. We have almost no choices that are viable. We would like to either be able to band together and go after bigger group rates or we would like to get health insurance out of our companies as it makes us no money and we spend too much time on it for no real return. Employees gripe about it constantly and we’ve had several leave to go to bigger companies where they are able to get better rates. I don’t really think it’s fair for large companies to be able to use health insurance as a competitive advantage. And I certainly don’t understand why Congress refuses to pass legislation preventing companies my size for banding togehter except that I know the insurance industry makes its profit off of the back of smaller companies and their employees. We are not allowed to discrminate against people who have health problems when we hire them yet the insurance companies can look at our company health premium history and discriminate against us by raising our premiums so that they can make even more money. Obama and Clinton think that the solution is to force companies to pay for health insurance — they never talk about how they are going to get it affordable. In the 80’s this was never an issue — premiums were low and nobody even worried about this. Now it is huge because of the cost which can run over $1,000 a month for a family. That is absolutely ridiculous for insurance. Plus now when you go to the doctor (who usually spends less than 5 minutes with you) and to the hospital (for even a minor emergency) you keep getting bills and more bills that total an unbelievable amount of money. I even got a bill for $12.00 for something that happened to me over a year ago!!
So it’s not only the insurance companies but also the health care system itself that seems to be charging an enormous amount for the time and effort expended on caring for people. The whole system is a nightmare and I haven’t heard one good solution from any of the candidates.
March 6th, 2008 at 9:28 am
I own a company with 124 employees. We are a small business as well. However, when I went from 50 employees to 124 our current insurance company would no longer give us a quote for “small business”, but they could not put us in the “big business” pool because we did not qualify. We had to shop around for an insurance company that was affordable yet had benefits that were worth paying for! If Hillary or Obama get elected, they will force small business to pay for the health benefits and then tax us all to death to pick up the difference. At least on the Republican side, they are talking about making it affordable to “John Q Public” which is only fair. I certainly don’t think any of the candidates understand small business. I believe if they picked a running mate who understood what it is to run a business (Romney) and the obstacles and barriers that we face as business owners, that candidate would be very successful!