Policy:
Health Insurance

Forget the bleeding heart call to keep people healthy and secure. The US needs a national health care system in order to strengthen its economy.

In the US, health insurance is usually provided through employers, specifically large employers. This system hurts the economy by hampering small businesses. Small businesses are key to job creation and entrepreneurial innovation, so anything that hampers them also weakens the economy as a whole.

The employer-based health insurance system hurts small businesses in three ways.

1. Big Business Bias: The policy makes small businesses less attractive as employers compared to larger companies. Large companies can bargain for better group rates and offer health coverage to employees, something that small businesses can't do. That disparity puts a small company at a disadvantage.

2. Growth Barrier: A small company that grows larger faces sudden expenses and regulations in order to stay in line with federal health coverage laws.

3. Punishing Entrepreneurship: The system makes you pay a significant cost (loss of corporate health insurance) if you want to quit your job and start your own business.

Establishing national health insurance would make it easier for people to start their own businesses, to hire people into their small businesses, and to grow their small businesses into companies that produce more goods and employ more people.

—JoT
June 2001

Health Insurance in the News

June 2005

Canadian Car Plant
Toyota chose Woodstock, Ontario, for its new North American car factory, after considering building the plant in Arkansas, Mississippi, and other US states. One factor that makes Canada more attractive than the US is that Toyota doesn't have to pay for Canadian workers' health insurance. Our employee-based health insurance policy is effectively a tax on employing people.