Small Business Health Insurance

This book offers an overview of the issues and status of small business health insurance in the United States and examines the question of whether existing tax incentives at the Federal and State level provide sufficient inducement to small businesses to adopt health insurance plans for their employees. Also discussed is the small business health insurance tax credit which was adopted as part of the Federal health care reform legislation and the factors contributing to its low use and complexity.

Caring For Profit traces how Canada's $77 billion a year health care industry is turning away from its original mandate of providing the best possible medical care to Canadians, and how multinational capital is forcing its way into our non'profit health care system. In Caring For Profit, Colleen Fuller traces alliances that were struck between private insurers and the medical profession during the 1950s and 1960s to defeat "socialized medicine". These alliances survived the establishment of medicare in Canada in 1968, and have been strengthened by new forces emerging in an era of globalization. Instead of a health care system focused on providing the highest quality of care to the greatest number of Canadians, the system is increasingly dominated by financial giants more concerned with consolidations, mergers, acquisitions, and higher profit margins. Caring for Profit is a "who's who" of key people and corporations making money in Canada's health care sector ? and a portrait of the strategies and alliances that threaten to replace the principles of medicare with the dictates of the stock market.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act contains several provisions to encourage employer-sponsored health coverage, particularly among small businesses. The provisions that most directly relate to small businesses are, an employer penalty for not providing health insurance; a tax credit to increase the affordability of health care for the smallest firms; and small business health insurance exchanges designed to increase plan options and lower plan costs. First, this book explains how employer-sponsored insurance can be used to address concerns about health insurance coverage and cost. It summarises the three ACA provisions most relevant to small businesses, listed above, and analyses these provisions for their potential effects on small businesses. The book then presents several approaches that could address some concerns associated with these provisions (particularly the employer penalty).