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.
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