Hastert: Small Business Health Fairness Act Will Make Health Insurance More Affordable and More Available to the Uninsured

6/19/2003

From: John Feehery or Pete Jeffries, 202-225-2800, both of the Office of House Speaker Dennis Hastert

WASHINGTON, June 19 -- Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert released the following statement today urging his colleagues to vote for the Small Business Health Fairness Act:

"We all know that our health care system is showing some troubling symptoms of crisis. Prescription drugs are too expensive. Health insurance is too costly, and for too many people, inaccessible. And health care costs are rising too quickly, driven by inefficiencies such as an over-reliance on emergency room care.

"Our health care system also has great strengths. We have the best doctors in the world, our hospitals are the finest and our medical technology is at the cutting edge. We also do the research that creates the life-saving drugs.

"Some say we should create a socialized medicine scheme to treat the symptoms of this crisis. I believe a national health care system will create more problems than it solves. It will hurt health care quality, lead to rationed care, and destroy the incentives that make our health care system second to none.

"We should use tools available to us in the market-place to solve the problems of the market-place and I believe that Associated Health Plans is one such tool. By allowing small businesses to band together to create larger bargaining pools, prices will fall.

"Some estimates say that 41 million Americans have no access to health insurance - which includes the majority of people who work for small businesses. The Small Business Health Fairness Act will give small businesses and uninsured working families the opportunity to access the type of quality health insurance benefits that large corporations and unions already enjoy.

"This bill gives AHPs freedom from costly state mandates because small businesses deserve to be treated in the same fashion as large corporations and unions, who receive this same exemption. It also gives small businesses the bargaining power to negotiate lower prices with health insurance companies.

"Finally, this bill will help create jobs. When I talk to small business owners, they constantly tell me that they can't afford to hire new workers because they can't afford the high costs of health insurance. If we could ease the burden, if we could make health insurance more affordable, we could make it easier for small business owners to hire more employees.

"This bill is an important first step in making health insurance more affordable and more available to the uninsured. Vote for this common-sense bill, and vote to help American families get better access to health insurance."