The right knows that they are supposed to hate Obamacare; the only problem is that they keep forgetting why. According to a study that they have been widely touting it promises to both increase coverage and reduce costs. Presumably these are not the reasons they oppose President Obama's plan.
One of the other reasons that the right has pushed is that President Obama's plan will be a serious impediment to the growth of small business, because it will require that they either provide coverage to their workers or pay a tax to support their coverage. The right tells us that the sort of tax/mandates that President Obama wants to impose on small business will stifle entrepreneurship and make the United States more like Europe.
When our friends on the right make this sort of argument, they once again leave the facts behind. John Schmitt, my colleague at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, just did a short study compiling evidence from the OECD on the relative importance of small business in the U.S. and Europe. It turns out that by every available measure, the U.S. is way behind when it comes to the relative importance of entrepreneurship and small business.
Let's start with the most basic measure, self-employment. We all know that everyone in America wants to run their own business. 7.2 percent of the workers in this country actually do. That puts us ahead of Luxembourg's self-employment rate of 6.1 percent, but behind everyone else. France has a self-employment rate of 9.0 percent, Germany 12.0 percent, and Italy 26.4 percent. If we exclude agriculture, our 7.5 percent self-employment rate for non-agricultural workers puts us ahead of Norway, but still far behind everyone else.
Okay, maybe self-employment doesn't tell us much about the role of small business. After all, there are many small family-run retail shops in Europe. That may not be most people's idea of entrepreneurship.
How about the share of small firms (fewer than 20 employees) in manufacturing employment? Well, our 11.1 percent share again beats out Luxembourg, and also Ireland, but it trails all the other countries for which the OECD has data.
Maybe 20 employees is not the right cutoff for a definition of small businesses in manufacturing. How about 500? By that measure, the U.S. comes in dead last. France's 63.7 percent share beats our 51.2 percent share by more than a dozen percentage points.
Perhaps we should just ignore manufacturing, that's old economy stuff. Surely the U.S. stands out for its vibrant computer upstarts. The 32.0 percent small firm employment share in computer related services beats Spain's 27.0 percent, but is well behind everyone else. Belgium, the capital of Old Europe, more than doubles our small business share, with 63.0 percent of its workers in this sector employed by establishments with less than 100 employees.
The U.S. does a hair better if we shift the focus to the research and development (including biomedical research). In the U.S., 25.3 percent of the workers in this sector are employed at establishments with fewer than 100 workers. That beats the 20.3 percent share in the Netherlands and the 22.5 percent share in the United Kingdom. However, the small business employment share in the U.S. is far behind the 33.1 percent share in France and the 35.0 percent share in Germany.
In short, the American dream of being a small business owner and the story of the United States as a nation of dynamic small businesses is largely a dream. It does not conform to the economic reality.
Will President Obama's health care plan promote small business and make us more like Europe? It very well might. One possible explanation for the relatively smaller role of small business in the U.S. economy is that concern over access to health insurance makes many people reluctant to strike out on their own and start a small business. The prospect of being stuck without health insurance has to be very scary for a 50-year old with some health problems.
Of course there are many other factors that also affect the ability of new businesses to be created and thrive, but as a simple factual matter, the idea that Europe's welfare state has strangled small businesses is not true. The politicians and pundits should be corrected when they spew such nonsense.
I hope so!
It is LobbyistCare.
Next, unless you get insurance companies out from front and center, then the chances of any so called reform boosting small businesses is remote heading for non-existent.
i hate the American healthcare system
i've seen too much
it needs to be torn down and rebuilt from scratch
we need to weaken or remove insurance from decision making
It seems so simple, too. A single-payer bill would probably be 50 pages instead of 1000.
i just know it needs reform
I've been through HMOs
one parent accidentally gets someone else's IV medication
no apologies but it did get reported
another parent gets a clean bill of health based on someone elses CT scan
ends up on a vetilator and gone within 5 months
ooops! sorry about the relapse mistake
long and short...,
I despise HMOs
and refuse to pretend ours is the greatest system in the world, just because I'm constantly told
i say -- how can I know who has the best system since I've never been to Europe or Canada.
but it can't be us!
Canada has a very good system and Canada's system is better than the system in the US.
In Canada, there are no insurance companies involved. Everyone is covered by the plan run by the government of Canada. You can do a search for more information.
I lived in Canada for seven years and I and my family were covered for hospitals, doctors and, I believe , drugs. It was free.
The Canadians do pay more in taxes, overall, but I would like to see the Canadian system in the US.
The insurance companies in the US are the reason our health care system is so bad and so expensive. Congress is also to blame because Congress caters to big business.
Congress should be ashamed of themselves.
Canadians come to the U.S. when they need something urgent. Because you can die
waiting to be treated in Canada. Of course unless your a dog... Because veterinary care is private, so if a dog needs an M.R.I. they get it right away. Not so for a human, they have to wait months and months.
If this is the case, then why do they continue to not allow interstate competition for healthcare? There's 1300 health insurance companies, yet many regions have monopolies, competition would keep these insurances honest, so why does the government continue to allow monopolies when there's ample competition that will vie for the consumer? This would allow co-ops for small business to take advantage of group rates. There's great ideas out there, yet the real goal is the power government can glean from the economy by controlling 20% of it, which is healthcare. http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110007011
The debt our country has accrued comes from all the programs that aren't paid for. What more evidence do you need that the government is should not be given the power to control 20% of the economy. Let's let them do what they do best, pass some of the ideas I've already mentioned. Create policies, framework and oversight that will bring costs down, this is what they're supposed to do. "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely", this famous quote addresses what awaits us poignantly if government run care is passed.
The best option would be to go back to the old model of non-profit insurance companies and hospitals. Each state would be responsible for administering its own system.
Canada is also held up as a model, yet 78% of Canadians consider their health care system to be in crises based on a recent polling by the well respected pollster Angus Reid.
And healthcare, which functions well. Free, Europeans are free, I find no difference between there or here in that respect. This must be done only in order to brainwash people. Socialism is great, because everyone gets a piece of the pie.
one respect: income tax. But the trade off was everyone
had absolutely free health insurance. We also got at least
at least 3 weeks vacation (paid) and as many as 6. The
doctor came to your house when you were sick and their
preventive care system has been elevated to an absolute
art, something about which our 65-70% obese society could
use a little learning.
In the United States health care is run for a profit, penal
systems are run for a profit (traded on the NYSE and
ever so careful NOT to rehabilitate a single prisoner
but rather to lobby Congress for more stringent rules
that hole more prisoners, often wrongly, for more
time, a frightening number of which are now being
through DNA to be absolutely innocent). Fixed news
and hate-mongering media like those of Glen Beck and
Rush Limbaugh don't convey truth but rather incite civil
uprising, all in the name of profit for corporate America
and even war is conducted for profit (the bridges
soliders used to build are farmed out to war profiteers
so that we pay at least double for every war and usually
a great deal more).
As Bill Maher so profoundly points out, the problem with
President Obama's health care is not socialism, it's
capitalism.
As he asked recently, "Since when did the motive for profit
become the only reason for doing anything in America?"
I would seriously distrust the doctors performing abroad who are chosen by insurance companies for being the low price choice. They may be excellent doctors and, taking the business away from Americans may leave American doctors with less experience: This is a frightening notion since it doesn't have to be, but it would be brought about by irresponsible profit seeking. Each community should have good care and specialists should be at hand.
I bitterly resent the idea that the United States must become a second rate nation where nothing works.
The odd thing is that we do have much that works even with all our faults. This isn't because we are politically well put together, but particular people are smart and diligent. In our system as in any system, what works works because those people make it work.
I do concede that some of our rascals are as bad as almost anyone and would be worse if they could get away with it.
Having been stationed in Europe for three years now, I've seriously contemplated staying. I love it here. The health, happiness and overall quality of life among Europeans is something that most Americans cannot even imagine before they get here, nor would they even recognize it because it largely isn't based on volume consumerism. And I've learned better than to try to convince them how panic-stricken and shallow we seem by comparison.
Will Obama's health care plan make us more like Europe? Probably not, but we can only hope. Your numbers speak for themselves.
:-)
While the NHS isn't a perfect medical system, it does guarantee coverage to all residents, and even to Americans on vacation. I found the standard of living in Europe to be quite dismal at times, and preventive care is almost nonexistent under socialized medicine, but Europeans in general are more willing to live with minor aggravating health conditions than Americans are.
That seems odd considering I know a great many Americans that live with chronic pain because they can't get itheir insurance company to cover it based on the fact that it was either a preexisting condition or that they have simply run out of benefits to cover that condition. My girlfriend is a great example of this. She works in the medical field and has insurance but they will not cover any chronic conditions so she is left with having no other choice but to live in pain.
We have looked into getting private insurance and it is impossible for us. I'm sure that's true for many others, too. It keeps people like us locked into corporate jobs we hate as well as stifling new business.
The Republicans pull these so called facts out of thin air and I wish the Dems would start calling them more on it. I know at least a few of them are bound to have spent some time in Europe and know the truth.
The BIOMEDICAL RESEARCH is paid for by the U.S. TAXPAYER !!!!
The Big Pharm companys come in and buy the rights to make certain drugs the taxpayers have paid to discover.
The drugs should go to the public and be licensed to every company to make around the world.
Disease is not an economic stimulator it is an economy destoryer !!!!!!