The White House’s responses to small business concerns on health care
Thanks to the thousands of small business owners and professionals for submitting your questions to the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) through LinkedIn Answers on some of the most important issues you’re dealing with around health care. We appreciate the thoughtfulness and passion with which you’ve crafted these questions.
We’d also like to thank the members of LinkedIn’s small business committee (David Reingold, Donald Rossberg, Jim Locke, Abraham Jankans, and Rudy Sutherland) who helped pick the questions that were answered by the CEA chair, Christina Romer at a live web video conference this past week (see below video).
Given below are the questions from LinkedIn’s small business community that were answered by the CEA. Check out a more detailed response to these questions in the video above:
1. How will the current health care proposals level the playing field so small businesses can effectively compete with large corporations for human capital?
- Abraham Jankans, President & CEO at LaunchPad Careers Inc. (Los Angeles)
2. How will you make health care affordable and available to small business? What about co-ops, affordable rates and inclusion of pre-existing conditions?
- from Kyra Cavanaugh, President of Life Meets Work Inc. (Chicago)
Kyra’s commentary:
For so many of us who’ve left jobs in corporate America with great health benefits to forge our own path through entrepreneurship, our families are left to suffer with sub-standard insurance and inclusion in the class of under-insured Americans.
3. How will you improve competition in health care, to allow for more competitive health plans, and what with this plan to do promote a more health environment through wellness?
- from A.J. Vazquez III, Founding Partner, AJV-Attorneys at Law (Miami)
A.J.’s commentary:
Affordability and availability. A small business owner should have a competitive selection of comparable health plans to choose from. As a small business owner taking care of my people is important to me. Creating an environment that focuses on wellness is a priority at my law firm. Healthy, productive employees are not only great for your company but is ultimately great for their respective families and our communities at large. It’s a win – win situation in the end that’s well worth the effort.
4. How did we get from providing insurance as a benefit, to the “requirement” that businesses provide insurance?
- from Marc Young, President at Zantech, Inc (watch repair company in Peoria, Illinois)
Marc’s commentary:
If we recognize that there are three basic tiers in the health care issue. Tier one – the providers (doctors, hospitals), this is where the “cost factors” begin. Many providers do not post their prices and they are not generally required or incented to be competitive with real cost hidden by the other Tiers; Tier two – the insurance companies, help to hide these costs and tack on their own costs as well as profits they earn; and Tier three – business that provide health coverage, although not directly adding to the cost of healthcare must increase their prices to generate more profits to cover the costs passed on to them from Tiers 1 and 2 less whatever recovery of costs they can get from their employee base. Since Insurance was never intended to be a perk but rather to be a necessary component of running a business, provided to compete for better employees.
5. Is making small businesses responsible for providing health care simply giving a competitive advantage to big businesses? Why not start with Tort reform and mandating insurers to cover pre-existing conditions with all policies being full portable, regardless of state, company or position?
- from Donald Rossberg, President of Dataworks, Inc. (IT consulting firm in Kansas City, Missouri)
To read more questions submitted by our users over the past week (over 1500 submissions), please go here.
Tags: 2009-small-business-report, american-small-business, cea-small-business-report, chair-cea, christina-romer, christina-romer-cea, council-of-economic-advisers, linkedin-answers, obama-health-care, obama-health-care-reform, obama-small-business, president-barack-obama, president-obama-healthcare, Reid Hoffman, us-small-business
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Daniel Sedlacek August 10th, 2009
Dear Linked In company,
have you noticed there is absolutely no way how to give you any feedback? The “Contact Us” or “Customer Service” links to nothing but FAQ. Are you this superior? Not interested in any feedback at all? From an internet company like you I have expected different attitude.
Regards,
Daniel Sedlacek
Quick Hit: White House Uses LinkedIn…for Healthcare Reform | Bizzy Women August 12th, 2009
[...] Check out the full post at the LinkedIn blog here. And even better, check out Romer’s video answering the questions she received on LinkedIn here. [...]
Dirk Frey August 14th, 2009
@ Daniel- Please be assured that we absolutely do want your feedback. You can provide that by clicking on the final link in the bottom navigational area of your homepage called:” Help improve LinkedIn. Send us your feedback.”
If you have a customer service issue that needs to be addressed: With over 45 million members we ask that members first do a search for their answer first using our bank of Customer Service Center FAQs. If you don’t find your answer, you can click on a tab that will be made available to you after doing your keyword search called ‘Ask Customer Service’ then submit your issue.
Betty Milwicz August 14th, 2009
Why not have tort reform? Health Care costs are not going to be contained until we have tort reform. A large part of Health Care costs are for malpractice insurance as well as extra testing. I do NOT believe that this is addressed at all in the bill. Another question — if this is to be what is BEST (?) for all citizens, why isn’t congress included????
Daniel Sedlacek August 14th, 2009
Dear Mr Frey,
first of all please accept my apology for the somewhat aggressive tone, sometimes I am being too passionate when it comes to companies listening to their customers. You would be surprised how many of the “big players” are still ignorant to customers feedback.
The link you mention is exactly what I was looking for, unfortunately it escaped my scanning (http://www.useit.com/alertbox/whyscanning.html) probably because I did not expect it to be there. When it comes to usability I have a basic rule – if I can’t find it it’s your fault, not mine. Also, I do not thing the trick that reveals a feedback form only when you have searched for a FAQ keyword is a good idea … but I have never dealt with 45 million users :).
Thanks for you reply and I will submit my feedback (and it is a relevant one) using the usual way.
Kind Regards,
Daniel Sedlacek
Michelle Bouthot September 24th, 2009
I am presently doing a paper on the ethics of healthcare reform. I am finding myself torn between many issues that I am learning about.
Small businesses should definately be able to offer healthcare to their employees. It is unethical in a society such as ours, or any society for that matter not to provide such a valuable benefit.
The key to providing an affordable plan should be in starting with tort reform regarding malpractice suits. It would be of value to have a panel review cases and see which one’s are true infringements to one’s wellbeing, while others are merely an attempt to get money from an insurer. Abuse of this system must be stopped.
Tort reform should be written in to health contracts. FAIR funds should be created for chronic conditions such as Diabetes, PKD, Cystic Fibrosis and other conditions that a genetically based. Then everyone can contribute to the fund and those funds can be invested for an additional return.
Extending availabilty across state lines for small businesses would be great. This can serve as a group insurance pool and then costs would be more evenly disbursed. There should be a campaign for counselling of our older generation on Advanced Directives and living wills. This way – end of care costs could be alleviated a bit; the person will be able to voice his/her final wishes.
The LinkedIn Blog » Blog Archive The White House asks: What is the biggest health care problem in your state? « October 6th, 2009
[...] Ed. Note: This is the second part in a series of questions from the White House. LinkedIn has teamed up with The White House to give professionals a voice in Washington. To read more, see the first question and highlights from the resulting webcast. [...]