Devoted to the Insurance industry and all thing related

Reading over the transcript for a Public Radio broadcast of the program Marketplace from yesterday about health insurance and small businesses I was shocked at a particular business.  The reporter Steve Tripoli used as an example a business near Boston called Lincoln Precision Machining that “makes hoists and winches for lifting things.”  

“When I first visited the company in 1999 it had 26 employees.  Health insurance coverage for a family cost $460 a month back then, and the company paid for all of it.  Today, Lincoln's down to 22 employees and family health insurance premiums have tripled — they're nearly $1,500 a month now.  And workers pay a share of that, about $300 a month.”

What an astonishing illustration of how much health care costs have gone up for small businesses in the past 8 years.  I’m scared to think of the cost to this company and millions more in the next 8 to 10 years.  Lincoln is the norm considering “since 1999 small-business health insurance premiums have risen about 125 percent nationally.”

 

The bottom line is that there needs to be a change in the health care and health insurance system in this country.  Otherwise small businesses and individuals will have to drop health insurance because they can no longer afford it.  Fortunately some states are leading the way towards universal health care and also business leaders.