This is an opinion piece, but I will do my best to keep my politics to myself. With the passage of a Federal healthcare bill, things will be changing. Some hope for the better, others expect the worst. But if you are a small business that provides health care benefits to your employees, here are some things to think about for the future.
National healthcare won’t kick in right away
First of all, there will be no mad rush to kick your employees off your business healthcare plan to a government plan. At best, we are looking at about four years before anything that was recently voted on will be fully enacted. There are political reasons for this, as well as practical. So don’t start counting all of the money you will be saving just yet.
Dropping employees may not be the right choice (or even legal)
There’s more. I am not sure on all of the details, but I know that small businesses will probably not be able to drop employees into a government healthcare pool. It sounds like a great idea, from a business owner perspective. But the government is counting on business owners to help foot the healthcare bill.
Businesses will likely be required to provide healthcare to employees. Sure, there will be incentives for special interest groups of all types, including small businesses, to make this an easier pill to swallow. But in the end, you could end up being required to provide business healthcare to employees. Every single American is going to be required to have insurance, and you can bet that the government will need your help to make sure that happens.
Here’s the thing. Because of this, you may be in the position of being required to pay more for health insurance that offers less. It is very possible. At the very least, the government run plan will not have any kind of flexibility to customize to your employees unique needs.
With this in mind, and if its still an option, you may be better off keeping employees on a private plan. If you are going to pay anyway, you might want to keep some of the control over what you are offering and how it helps your people.
Private options may get better
This one may be a pipe dream. Government regulations and short-sighted laws, plus cost of entry in the health care field and big business group think, have led us to some pretty horrible health insurance options. Health costs are out of control and insurance has a hard time keeping up with them. That is not likely to get better any time soon, since very little out of the box thinking seems to have been applied to the Federal government’s healthcare fix-all.
However, there is a chance that private companies will spring up to fill in gaps and to offer competitive healthcare and insurance options. If this is the case, you may have an opportunity to find and provide better and cheaper business healthcare options for your employees.
One thing a national healthcare insurance does is break down state barriers to health insurance companies. If the government doesn’t pave the way for national companies to emerge and compete on a national level, then they are just creating a monopoly. Unfortunately, the government often ignores its own very real monopolies and instead spends time and money trying to break up imagined monopolies that are just the result of good business.
You can still use healthcare as a competitive edge
If there remains an option for private health insurance, you will likely be able to use it as a competitive advantage for hiring good people. As national healthcare in other countries have shown us, quality of care and attention to the patient often goes way down with a government program.
A private program that rewards doctors can provide a much better level of care. With creative thinking and smart business practices, private health insurance and care can be much better than government subsidized care. So if you can, you may want to be the company that offers a private option, rather than the same government option that potential employees can get everywhere else.
The bill that President Obama is pushing is likely only the first step. We have yet to see the full implications. But, as with any far-reaching government program, there are going to be ripples throughout the country. Perhaps some positive things will happen. Just as likely, some negative things will happen. But this much is for sure, as a small business owner you shouldn’t jump in until you know the score. And you should always seek a competitive edge and seek to take care of your employees the best way you possibly can.
