Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

Mini-Biz Health-Care Wishes and Woes, Pt.7 – Is agreeing to higher taxes typical?

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When considering voluntary tax increases for health insurance/care, it’s interesting to note here, that a major scale has been tipped.  By necessity, taxes have been a top priority for these microbusinesses going way back.  Often times the business’ survival depend on tax breaks.  Their asset/liability-margin is generally to slim to endure increased overhead from taxes or otherwise.  So when we see that 40.3% of these entrepreneurs are actually willing to volunteer paying higher taxes for a better health insurance/care system, we need to understand that the more expected percentage would have been closer to 0%.  Only would an extreme exception cause such a change as this.  This reflects an extreme commitment from a substantial percentage that these extreme health insurance/care reforms are now essential.

When asked by Ms. Klein about the 33% adversity of a government-run health insurance/care system, executive director of NASE (who conducted this study), Kristie Darien responds.  “Most are concerned about the potential for reduced quality of care and paying higher taxes.”  Other concerns were less pronounced.  These are issues like limited medical choices, excessive delays for non-emergencies and treatment by specialists, higher health insurance costs and limited access to medical care.  The overall view comes from the prospective of who these people are. Entrepreneurs are achievers who excel because they make good choices. So they believe that anything which limits their choices also limits their success.

When asked what the government should be doing to resolve this health insurance/care crises, there were some very helpful responses.  Those elected by the majority were:

•  Allow small businesses to join associations to purchase larger-pool group health insurance.
•  Provide better incentives for small business owners to purchase health insurance with tax credits.
•  Reforming tax law so to provide the same tax benefits for buying either private health insurance or employer-based.
•  “Increasing regulation on health insurance, pharmaceutical companies, and hospitals.”

Those elected by the near-majority were:

•  “Expanding government programs to cover uninsured children and low-income individuals unable to pay for coverage.”
•  Increasing funds for states to cover high-risk pools for ‘medically challenged’ individuals and those with chronic or terminal illness.