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RANT: Small business and health insurance
Friday, March 30, 2007 — posted by Sarah
Recently, we interviewed a candidate for one of our open positions. "Joe Blow"* has the perfect background, exactly matches our job requirements, comes highly recommended, and clicked with everyone in our office.Joe will not be joining us at Scriptorium.
One of Joe's family's doctors is not in our provider network. Joe would either have to pay out-of-pocket (very expensive) or switch doctors (not the best medical decision).
And thus, Joe has decided that he cannot work here because it would negatively affect ongoing medical treatment of one of his family members.
I can't fault his logic. (Logical thinking -- another reason we were very interested in hiring him!)
We're obviously not the only ones facing this problem. At least we are providing health insurance; the lack of any coverage from small businesses is a big part of the problem:
Of the 47 million Americans without health insurance, 60 percent are employees or dependents of employees who work for small businesses. (Small biz caught in health care tug-of-war, Fortune Small Business)A recent article in BusinessWeek (Held Hostage by Health Care) describes the problem of job "lock-in" because of health insurance issues:
Kelly Services Inc. (KELYA ) Chief Executive Carl T. Camden [says workers] are increasingly shackled to their jobs for no reason other than to cling to their employers' health insurance coverage. These are people, he says, "who don't leave a job even though they're unhappy and would be more productive somewhere else.For small businesses, it's a disaster. Our hiring options are restricted because working for us is too risky. For big business, it's also a disaster -- they end up with a sicker pool of people to insure because employees with medical issues (or family members with medical issues)
stay with larger employers.
Employees are forced to make career decisions based on factors that should be -- but aren't -- irrelevant. Instead of focusing on job responsibilities, career growth, corporate culture, and the like, potential employees must ask about health insurance, deductibles, provider networks, and family coverage.
Your health, your spouse's health, or your child's health should not be dependent on your employer.
Meanwhile, our insurance costs are going up about 10 percent each year. After salaries, health insurance is our biggest cost.
Some of our competitors do not offer health insurance coverage. Some are located in countries with universal health insurance. Some one-person operations use their spouse's big-company job to get coverage.
Can you tell I'm upset? We are unable to hire the people we want to hire because of Stupid Extraneous Factors.
I have no solutions; only a rant.
* Name changed for obvious reasons.
11:05 AM Permalink |
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