Capital Commerce

Would Universal Healthcare Promote Business Growth?

August 7, 2009 RSS Feed Print

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We know that many small-business owners struggle with rising healthcare costs. One way to relieve this burden is to shift the responsibility of health insurance away from employers to another party—such as the government. Jeff Cornwall makes the point, however, that such a move would create new costs for businesses:

...there is no such thing as free healthcare. Socialized healthcare is going to cost money. We will need to raise this money as a country through either increasing taxes or borrowing more money. If we increase taxes that will decrease your income as an entrepreneur. If we run up the federal deficit even further to pay for healthcare, we will at some point very soon stoke the flames of inflation. That will squeeze your operating profits as a small business owner. Entrepreneurs get hit hardest during inflation due to their lack of market power -- their costs go up faster than they can increase prices.

But I should say, this is not necessarily a defense of employer-based health insurance. Costs of healthcare and the pressure for employers to pay for them has a serious negative impact on the creation of new businesses in the US (see evidence here.) But we should find a way to relieve this burden without creating new ones like more inflation (see above) or higher taxes.

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Couldn't we just take some money from the defense budget? Wouldn't have to raise taxes. We might not even need to do that. We put twice as much into healthcare than the countries with Universal coverage. We could just slowly slip into Universal coverage without raising taxes.

BobbJOE of UT 10:58AM September 09, 2009

Maybe we should look into the rising cost of healthcare and the causes. We ultimately will pay for it all, but if doctor's insuances and pharmasutical costs weren't so high we might have a fighting chance. Government has failed us by not limiting the third party earners in our healthcare system. We seem to be at the mercy of the almighty dollar and as the rich get richer and the poor get poorer we must take up our rights and fight the overpriced system we have through legislation limiting insurance costs and unfair denial of insurance to those who need it most. Car insurance companies have to join a pool for high risk drivers. Why shouldn't health care insurance companies have to cover a portion of the high risk victoms? I'm not talking about the drunk on the corner who smokes two packs a day and will come down with lung cancer in the next 5 years, I'm talking about the infant born with cancer who can't get insurance because of a prexisting condition. Self induced conditions are a shame, but if you choose to smoke why should i have to pay for your ignorant behavior? Less people would smoke if they knew that they would have to live with their condition when they came down with cancer. Our problems with healthcare need to start addressing causes of overcost due to money hungry opurtunists and sicknesses caused by self abuse. Healthcare is out of control because people are not being called on their crap!

kwclark of NY 8:10PM August 11, 2009

Matt, the article provides very solid 'Economics 101' information which is valuable to many peolpe in understanding the challenges our country faces with health care issues. Notice I didn't say "reform" or "insurance" - two terms that are over-used and too restrictive to address the scope of the problem.
My issue is that you close the article with the following sentence: "But we should find a way to relieve this burden without creating new ones like more inflation (see above) or higher taxes." No kidding........really? It demonstrates a firm grasp of the obvious, but doesn't get us any closer to a solution. We need thinkers like yourself to provide potential approaches to help the country "find a way". Suggesting that someone (else) needs to solve the problems is fairly useless, and generally leads to the federal government making the decision for all of us.

JAW of AZ 11:33PM August 07, 2009