Health Insurance Eagle River AK

Two of the most pronounced trends in U.S. business in the past 10 years have been the rise of entrepreneurial activity and the decline in the availability of affordable health-care coverage. As a startup or small-business owner, you are no doubt well-aware of both trends – painfully so, in one case.

While running your own company has lots of advantages, the need to provide health-care coverage for you and your employees ranks as the biggest downside.

The picture – and there’s no way to pretty this up -- is bleak. Medical-insurance premiums overall have continued to soar at double-digit rates every year for more than a decade. Meanwhile, growth in the unfortunate ranks of Americans who are living with no medical coverage has become one of our biggest social-policy crises.

The situation is especially dire for sole proprietors and owners of very small businesses. About 45 percent of those “microbusiness” owners who responded to a recent survey by the National Association for the Self-Employed agreed that it is necessary to offer a health insurance benefit to find and hire qualified people. And more than 80 percent maintained that small businesses don’t have access to the same health-insurance options as large companies.

Also in the survey, about 46 percent said they don’t have access to health-insurance options that fit their startup company’s needs.

Copyright 2009 StartupNation, LLC

Click here to read more from StartupNation