The Current Status of Healthcare Reform

Click the arrow below to play the podcast in this window, or click the link to open it in a new window.

Healthcare Reform: A Business Owner's Perspective

This week Terry Frett, of Frett Barrington Limited, was on the show to discuss the current status of healthcare reform from a business owner's perspective.

We have seen the completion of the House of Representative’s work on a formal bill that has now passed out of the House. This most recent development in healthcare has a big impact on small businesses in Wisconsin. Terry discusses important themes including employer mandate, individual mandate, new taxes, and health insurance reforms.

Why is healthcare reform such a hot issue right now? Well, fewer and fewer Americans have health insurance, and therefore cannot afford good medical care. Nearly 46 million Americans have no insurance, and 25 million more are underinsured. One major reason for this crisis is that many employers have stopped offering insurance to employees because of the high cost. In the United States, total health care spending was $2.4 trillion in 2007 -- or $7,900 per person -- according to an analysis published in the journal Health Affairs. The United States spends 52 percent more per person than the next most costly nation, Norway, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation. There's little debate that health care reform is necessary -- President Obama, Republican and Democratic members of Congress, the American Medical Association and America's Health Insurance Plans, which represents the insurance industry, all have agreed the system needs to be changed, although they disagree on how to do it.