April 2005

Small business insurance bill advances in Congress

A bill that will expand access to healthcare coverage for many of the 45 million Americans who are currently uninsured has been approved by the House Education and the Workforce Committee. The Small Business Health Fairness Act (H.R. 525) would allow small businesses to band together through association health plans (AHPs) and provide quality healthcare to their workers at a lower cost. An identical measure was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives in 2004. 

The goal of the bill is to allow small businesses the same bargaining power as big businesses in the healthcare arena, according to Sam Johnson (R-TX), author of the bill. The bill has the support of President Bush and currently has more than 115 bipartisan House co-sponsors.

The AHP bill would increase small businesses’ bargaining power with healthcare providers, give them freedom from costly state-mandated benefit packages and lower their overhead costs by as much as 30 percent — benefits that large corporations and unions already enjoy because of their larger economies of scale.

Small businesses in most states are stuck with disproportionately high costs because they have to choose from fewer than five providers; AHPs offer them new options to choose from

For more information about Association Health Plans and the broad coalition that supports AHPs, please visit the website http://www.ahpsnow.com/.

Source: Association Health Plans Coalition, www.ahpsnow.com

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