WASHINGTON – The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that as many as 15 million employees might lose their current healthcare benefits under the Democrat-sponsored healthcare reform bill, USA Today reports.
CBO based its projections on a draft of the bill in the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, and are particularly worrisome to small businesses paying lower wages.
“The health insurance system doesn’t really work well for small employers,” said Greg D’Angelo, a policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation. He pointed out that the number of people who would lose insurance coverage depends on items still under negotiation.
CBO estimates that as many as 10 million lower-wage employees would voluntarily stop using their employer-provided insurance because the proposed government subsidies would make it less expensive to purchase insurance on the open market.
With that number leaving employee-provided insurance, some businesses might discover it is cost-prohibitive to continue offering insurance to other employees, potentially placing another 10 million people seeking coverage on the open market. An additional 5 million people might sign up for health benefits through their employees where it was not available before.
Republicans have latched onto CBO’s estimates, saying that “millions of Americans will lose the health insurance they have and like,” in the words of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). Democrats have countered with saying that the final proposal will have protections to keep that scenario from occurring.
But a survey by the National Small Business Association found that almost 10 percent of small business owners are thinking about eliminating health coverage in 2010, regardless of what happens in Congress.