Call a Doctor! Small businesses hope for cures to ailing health coverage system / Entrepreneur Magazine June 2007

Entrepreneur Jim Henderson, 43, is tired of seeing his employees' health coverage whittled away. The owner of St. Louis-based Dynamic Sales Co. Inc., has become visible at governmental round table discussions and is something of a poster child for small-business frustration over rate hikes.

Henderson has grappled with insurance costs for his seven employees for 17 years. As the second-generation owner of a construction and industrial supply firm with annual sales of $1.5 million, he remembers when his employees had a zero-deductible, 100-percent coverage plan.

This year, Henderson went to a deductible of $2,000--with employees responsible for the first $1,000. "It's a solution, but it's not one I'm happy with," he told me.

Double-digit hikes in the cost of health care every year have business and government leaders looking for a silver bullet--and entrepreneurs saying that it's about time.

Of the nation's estimated 46 million uninsured, 27 million are either small-business owners, employees or dependents.

For more on the health care crisis among entrepreneurs, see this JLL article in the June 2007 issue of Entrepreneur Magazine. http://www.entrepreneur.com/magazine/entrepreneur/2007/june/178358.html

J. Louise Larson http://jlouiselarson.blogspot.com/