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By: Karen Crowson

Congress has the opportunity to pass legislation that is so overwhelmingly popular it gets nearly 90 percent of the electorate’s vote, is critically important to the well-being of 45 million uninsured Americans, and is vital to the financial health of millions of small businesses.

Today, the quality and availability of health care coverage is dictated by the specific employer or the size of the company. More often, the self employed or small business workers pay more and get less coverage. This is a not so subtle form of discrimination and should not be tolerated.

The Health Insurance Marketplace Modernization and Affordability Act, or S. 1955, would allow self-employed workers and small-business employees to band together through a trade or professional association to negotiate lower health insurance costs. This would give small business workers access to the same quality group health insurance plans currently available to union workers and employees of large corporations.

Small business health plans would be able to take advantage of the same administrative savings and increased negotiating powers as large corporate and union plans. Legislation passed the House last year and S.1955 is expected to be voted on by the full Senate in the next few weeks.

Why is it so important to pass S. 1955 now? Ask Dorwin Shaddox, a Harrison Realtor® who had a four-wheeler accident a few years ago. Shaddox injured his legs and, in the course of his treatment, a cancerous tumor was discovered. Shaddox didn’t have medical insurance because a policy for an individual was too expensive. Fortunately, he was able to sell enough assets to cover his bills, but that put Shaddox and his wife in a precarious financial position.

"Just like that, what we had been working for over the past 30 years just went down the drain," he said, explaining the assets sold to cover medical bill were what Shaddox was counting on for seeing him through his retirement years.

Or, visit with Randy Porter, a Realtor® in Benton with an expensive medical condition that he couldn’t afford to treat without health insurance. Porter can’t afford to purchase an individual health insurance policy, so he is on his wife’s family plan. But, Porter said his wife has had to turn down more lucrative jobs because they didn’t offer plans that covered families. So, she’s working at her current position for one reason only – her employer provides the type of plan needed to pay for Porter’s medical bills.

Multiply these stories by tens of millions and you get the picture. Yet, a few health care interests are complaining that the legislation would pre-empt state health insurance mandates. Not surprisingly, many of the interest groups lobbying against the bill represent the very health providers who benefit from mandates. The fears are simply not justified.

The fact is that if a small business health plan does not comply with a state’s coverage mandates, then an additional policy must be offered to association members that either complies with state law or with the coverage included in one of the five most populous state’s state employee plans (California, New York, Florida, Illinois or Texas). States, like the federal government, offer their employees some of the best insurance plans today

Another misconception is that small business plans will "cherry pick" and cover only healthy workers. Not true. Specific provisions have been included in the bill to maintain a "level playing field" between small business plans and state-regulated plans that will prevent "cherry picking". They will be subject to the same Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), which makes it illegal to deny coverage to any eligible participant based on the health status of an individual employee or employer.

Small business health plans will be regulated by state insurance commissioners, not the federal government. Insurers participating in small business health plans must be licensed in all states in which association members are enrolled. As a licensed insurer, the insurer would be regulated by the state insurance commissioner and subject to all state insurance laws with the exception of underwriting and rating rules explicitly addressed in S. 1955. State oversight is not neglected as some may lead the public to believe. Also, small business plans, as authorized by S. 1955, must be structured as fully-insured insurance programs.

When voters want to know what Congress has done for them lately, there is an answer within reach--affordable and comprehensive health care insurance. America’s small businesses, their employees and their families are watching and waiting.