Small Business Health Plan Option

The Small Business Health Plan Option, or SHOP, is just one example of how the healthcare industry is on the reform and expanding. This plan, proposed by Senators Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), helps bridge the gap between the insured and uninsured.

According to the senators backing the Small Business Health Plan Option, over half of the nation's uninsured are either:

• Self-employed;
• Work for a small business; or
• Are a dependent of an employee of a small business.

Small business ventures provide approximately 75% of the new jobs in the economy. These companies have minimal health insurance policies that often cannot include dependents such as spouses and children. Those that are self-employed also commonly live day-to-day without health insurance. Small businesses that are providing health insurance to their employees usually offer the lower-end policies.

To address this issue and make healthcare more readily available for everyone, SHOP proposes three key components to aid the self-employed and small business firms:

• Small businesses may band together across state lines to spread risks of their employees and lower premium rates;
• Small businesses will receive tax credits to help offset their contribution to employee coverage;
• Insurance companies will not be able to tag people with ratings based on health status, which penalized those with health issues and hiked rates sky high for companies with one employee that fell ill.

The implementation of SHOP will cause drastic growth in the health industry. As the self-employed and workers of small business firms gain access to health coverage, and the dependents of small business workers are also added to their health plans, those 75% new jobs will suddenly enter the healthcare fray and cause an explosion of healthcare jobs.

This is only one of many signs of the growth and reform of the healthcare industry.