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Poet Robert Frost once wrote of coming to a fork in the road and taking the “one less traveled by.” I thought of his poem recently when I heard a young couple talking about the risks of a possible entrepreneurial venture. The main risk, the main hurdle to their thinking about the possibility of creating a new business was the dilemma of obtaining affordable health insurance coverage.
So they are standing at a fork wondering whether to take a road less traveled and strike out on their own business rather than stick to a more familiar road of employment with benefits.
I thought, then, of our own experience with the small businesses we operated for years and the struggles we had providing health care for employees and ourselves. We were at a disadvantage in competing for employees against large companies that offered insurance they purchased at more competitive rates.
Small businesses are vital to our nation’s economy, producing about half of our gross domestic product and, according to President Obama, created some 70 percent of new jobs in the last decade. We can’t afford to stifle them.
But big companies have their own problems. The Council on Foreign Relations, in an analysis earlier this year, noted the disadvantage U.S. companies face in international competition because of the high costs health care added to their operations — 134 percent more than the median of other developed nations.
GM, for example, says that health-care costs have added $1,500 to $2,000 to the sticker price of every automobile it makes. “These costs prompt fears that an increasing number of U.S. businesses will outsource jobs overseas or offshore business operations completely,” the council’s analysis said.
So millions of Americans — young people skewing their employment decisions to match health-care need, small-business owners and major corporation CEOs seeking relief, people with pre-existing conditions trying to find coverage, the 47 million uninsured — wait for Congress to answer their demands for reform in our nation’s broken system.
So what’s holding things up? Why are we hearing that reform might not happen after all?
The Wisconsin Democracy Campaign’s Big Money Blog offers an answer: The politicians in Washington have 113 million reasons why reform is stalling out.
That’s $113 million, the total amount of 2008 campaign contributions they have received from organizations — pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, insurance industry — that have special interests.
“One hundred and thirteen million reasons why the richest nation on earth turns a blind eye to pain and suffering and economic calamity, and why its leaders put the profits of the few ahead of the needs of the many,” according to the Big Money Blog.
If that is the case, then we the people need to let our politicians know that no amount of special interest campaign funds will save their jobs if they fail to provide for one of the nation’s most pressing needs — a reform of the health-care industry that will provide comprehensive, affordable health-care coverage.
If the young couple had asked me about their prospects, how could I have encouraged them to take the chance that health-care coverage would be available at a reasonable cost? How could I be confident that Congress would take their needs into account and get on with the reform?
Unfortunately, I couldn’t. But there is still a chance that one day young entrepreneurs will be able to take the road less traveled, and that it will make “all the difference” both for them and for our economy that badly needs the economic stimulus of small business growth along with the other benefits of reform.
Dave Skoloda, former editor and co-owner of the Onalaska Community Life and Holmen Courier and an adjunct journalism professor at Winona State University, can be reached at dskoloda@earthlink.net.
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