Business for Shared Prosperity

Letter to the Editor by John Arensmeyer
San Francisco Chronicle, 11/28/07

Small businesses care

Editor - Your cartoon published on Nov. 24, showing small business turkeys being sacrificed by the Democrats to obtain health care coverage for California's uninsured, completely misrepresents the health care needs of small businesses.

It is California's 3.2 million small business owners who are fed up with the ever-rising price of health coverage and who are desperate for comprehensive reform now. A recent poll found that small businesses across California overwhelmingly want to ensure that their employees have health coverage, believe that government must play a key role in the process, and are more than ready to be part of the solution. Eighty percent agree that employers should pay something to provide health care to their employees. They believe, by a 3-to-1 margin, that health care financing is a shared responsibility among individuals, businesses and government, and a substantial plurality supports the health care reform proposal currently pending in Sacramento.

It is this very compromise legislation that is necessary to ensure that California's entrepreneurs can start and grow their businesses, secure in the knowledge that furthering their entrepreneurial dreams, and propelling the California economy forward, will not jeopardize the health of their employees, their families and themselves.

JOHN ARENSMEYER
Founder and CEO
Small Business Majority
Sausalito

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/11/28/ED9OTJBK9...