Consumer Group Report Shows Small Businesses Struggling With Rising Health Care Costs
Ann Arbor, MI, Oct. 7, 2009— Michigan small business owners are being crushed by rising health care costs according to a new report released by the Public Interest Research Group in Michigan (PIRGIM) today.
“Inefficiencies and waste in health care are driving up the costs of coverage for small businesses throughout the state,” said Kara Rumsey, PIRGIM Advocate. “Our report gathers stories from small business owners across the state, and the problems are always the same: unaffordable policies, insurance company abuses, and an inefficient system drowning in red tape.”
The new report, Michigan Small Businesses at Risk, makes clear that small business owners, like Mark Hodesh of Ann Arbor’s Downtown Home and Garden, need health care reform.
“Health care right now is such a problem that if I tried to run my business the way they run theirs, I’d lose all of my customers,” Hodesh said.
In an event releasing the report, Hodesh used his own business to demonstrate leading health care problems:
• Insurers can decide they won't cover some customers for pre-existing conditions. If Hodesh tried that in his business, he wouldn’t sell plants to customers who had never gardened before, or who had ever had any problems with insects or weeds.
• Right now, health insurers can rescind our coverage if they think there were inaccuracies and mistakes on the long, complicated application forms we fill out. If Hodesh did that, he would reserve the right to go into someone’s garden and dig up the plants he sold if he thought he could make a better profit selling it to someone else.
• In the health care system, premiums have doubled over the last ten years, and they're set to double again over the next eight. If Hodesh’s prices had been going up like health care costs over the last decade, a simple skillet would cost $31.65 today rather than $18. And customers would be shelling out $58.05 by 2016.
“In any other business, consumers wouldn’t tolerate these sky-high prices, rampant inefficiencies, and customer abuses without walking out,” concluded Rumsey. “But lack of competition and skewed incentives have turned our health care system into a nightmare. It’s time for Congress to pass strong reforms, including a public health insurance option, to lower costs and rein in these insurers.”
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The Public Interest Research Group in Michigan (PIRGIM) is a non-profit, non-partisan public interest advocacy organization. For more information visit http://www.pirgim.org.
Click the link below for an example of what customers would have to deal with if Hodesh ran his business like health care.
Downtown-Home-and-Garden-application.pdf