Daily News Updates - Health Insurance News

SHOP Act Introduced – More Health insurance legislation.

Legislative news reported by Steve Cahalan of the La Crosse Tribune, Wis speaks of a prospective joint effort between Democrats and Republicans in Congress concerning health insurance. The Wisconsin Democratic Congressman, Ron Kind held a press conference there, last week. He explained that the House has introduced a bill, the purpose of which is to assist small businesses in procuring and delivering affordable health insurance to their employees. This new House version is called the SHOP Act, which stands for Small Business Health Options Program. There is also a Senate version, which began back in April. During the conference, Mr. Kind stated: "Small businesses in the United States are in a crisis today when it comes to finding affordable health insurance." He blames ‘rising costs’ as the reason that families where the “head of household is self-employed or works in a small business” account for 60% of the Americans who have no health insurance.

The bill was well received by many business groups, as well. Groups like the National Association of Realtors, the Service Employees International Union and the National Federation of Independent Business were all there in support. This latter group, the NFIB delivered the significant 60% statistic. They explained that, of the 47 million Americans with no health insurance, a full 28 million are related the Small Business limitations. Limitations like tax breaks and risk-pool opportunities afforded to the larger corporations. So, in order for Small Business to get equal health insurance benefits, their rates are 18% higher.

So what the SHOP Act is intended to do is to group small business together, along with the self-employed, either at state-level or nationally to create larger risk-pools. These larger numbers will, effectively, lower health insurance benefit rates. This will level the playing field more closely to the larger companies.