Health Care and the Small Business

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Here's my situation. I'm a business owner in B.C. I run a small business (currently four employees and two partners) that has been thriving here in Vancouver for 10+ years now. My partner is likewise a small business owner, running an hair salon in Vancouver's Gastown, which he's been doing for going on six years now.

Neither of us has extended healthcare. He has a 13-year-old daughter (my step-daughter), and in early February we had a baby girl. He's in his early 40s; I'm in my mid 30s. We are, one could say, a fairly typical modern urban Canadian family.

With all the talk of health care and insurance down south these days, it's easy to get on our Canadian high horse and brag about how good we have it. And we do. But for the small business owner getting extended health care coverage for prescriptions, therapies like chiropractic care or physiotherapy, vision coverage, and dental care is not easy.

Many folks who are blessed to have extended health plans through their work – typically at large organizations, where the coverage is pretty decent and expected –  don't realize the situation that small business owners and the self-employed are in.

With less bargaining power, the individual (in my experience any small company gets treated like an individual in the eyes of an insurance provider) gets a bum deal when it comes to getting extended health. I recently applied to a few different providers to get coverage for our family and we're looking at $300+/month for the four of us and we won't get coverage for any existing conditions, which in our case are asthma, some food allergies and migraines.

That means that all of our current drug and additional therapy costs – asthma puffers, epi-pens and chiropractic care for migraines – will not be covered by our insurance plan, despite our paying $300 a month. In fact, for where we currently sit as a pretty healthy family, we'll be getting nothing but 80 percent on an annual dental visit for that nearly $4000 a year.

As the economy moves towards more and more small businesses I can't help but feel that we need a way for small business to unite and negotiate terms with extended health insurance providers to put us on similar footing to the large companies/organizations that used to be the primary employers.

My company currently offers its staff access to a Health Trust, which is effectively a way for us to provide some health care funding to staff at a decent tax break, but, admittedly, it's not the same as insurance.

If you run a small business, or are in a similar situation, what have you done? What can be done to make extended health more affordable to small businesses and the self employed?

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  • emira mears, 
  • Business Planning, 
  • SMB Management, 
  • Health and Pharmaceuticals