Mandatory Small Business Health Insurance?

The health insurance payment burden is stretching to business owners and workers alike across the country. In neighborhoods across the nation, small and large business owners are discussing the feasibility and possibility of being required to buy health insurance for their workers. This quite frankly would put many small businesses out of business.

State governments across the country are trying to decide whether it’s best to require business owners to foot the bill for health insurance for workers or whether small business workers on meager budgets should have to buy their own health insurance. In California, something has to give. The state’s Democrats want business owners in the state to be required to provide health insurance coverage to workers. The Republicans in California believe the workers should be on their own to fund their insurance. Something truly has to give, as the state is determined to make universal health care mandatory.

Small business owners say the high cost of providing coverage to all workers will truly put them under—and this is a very real hurdle in the health insurance debate. If California requires all businesses to provide health insurance for full-time workers, either hours will be cut across the board to hourly wage-earners or the owners of many mom-and-pop stores and restaurants will be battling to stay afloat. If full-time workers who barely make minimum wage are required to pay for health insurance without discounts from the state governments, the take-home pay of these workers who already don’t make very much will be cut by a high percentage.