Panel OKs health bill for small businesses

A bill designed to help small businesses handle employee health-plan problems was passed out of a House committee Friday.

HB122 was passed out of the House Business and Labor Committee by a 10-2 vote but only after the bill was substituted a second time.

The first substitute created the Utah Small Business Health Plan that would have allowed small businesses to get health coverage under the Public Employees' Benefit and Insurance Program. It also created a Utah Small Business Health Plan Advisory Council.

The second substitute simply calls for the council to be formed to study issues and make recommendations about the creation of a plan to insure small businesses, defined as those with two to 50 workers. The council would deliver "an actuarially sound plan proposal" to the committee at the 2007 legislative session.

Finding affordable employee health insurance is "a very serious problem" for small businesses, said the bill's sponsor, Rep. Steve Mascaro, R-West Jordan. The substitute bill will allow the council to "look at all options . . . to try and serve this community," Mascaro said.

"There is a real need for health-care insurance for small employers, those from two to 50," said bill co-sponsor Rep. Fred Hunsaker, R-Logan. "And the intent of this is to establish the mechanism, the process, in which we determine what kind of plan we have, what kind of plan is available. Then we can better determine how it can function."

Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon noted that half of the state's jobs are in his county, "and more and more of these companies cannot provide health insurance."

Dr. Joseph Q. Jarvis of the Utah Alliance for Health Policy Solutions said that 95 percent of the 600,000 Utahns working for companies with 50 or more workers have health benefits, while only about half of the 250,000 working for small businesses do.

"Approximately 25,000 Utah small-business employees have lost their health insurance since the turn of the century," Jarvis said. "The vast majority of the 300,000 uninsured in Utah are small-business employees or their dependents. Unquestionably the loss of these health benefits can be attributed to the rapid rise of premiums in Utah, which are up five times faster than earnings during the past five years and double the national rate.

"If we care about economic development in Utah, we must find a way to make health benefits sustainably affordable to small-business employees."

Candace Daley of the National Federal of Independent Business said the health-care problem hits hardest companies with two to five employees.