Fewer Small Businesses Offering Health Insurance


By Staff
(AXcess News) Washington - Recent surveys show that the number
of small businesses able to afford health insurance for their
employees is on the decline.

Though General Electric (NYSE: GE)
says it has a solution that could might provide welcome relief to
small business owners.
About 40 percent of companies nationwide do not offer healthcare
benefits to employees, compared to 31 percent in 2000. The vast
majority of companies that have eliminated health benefits have
fewer than 200 employees, according to a national employer health
benefits survey conducted by the non-profit Kaiser Family
Foundation.
GE points to another survey by the Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation that found more than one-third of U.

S. businesses expect
at least some of their employees to drop their health insurance due
to rapidly rising costs.
Eric Kirchner, national sales leader for Benefit Solutions by
GE, GE's line of employee health discount and legal benefit
products, said,"There is a huge and growing demand for programs
that can help employees defray the high costs of healthcare."
Kirchner claims that Benefit Solutions by GE can provide a
portfolio of non-insurance health discount options that can be
incorporated separately or as a group, including medical, dental,
vision, prescription and supplemental options.

GE also provides
legal assistance benefit programs that help businesses combat a
leading cause of absenteeism and employee stress, Kirchner
said.
"Employees are spending money and time on health and legal
issues today more than ever before," said Kirchner. "So businesses
are looking for useful, cost-effective enhancements to their
benefit programs."
"We can provide employers what they need to round out their
benefit portfolios, so they can recruit great new employees and
take better care of the ones they have," said Kirchner.


While Kirchner's company claims they can help, the actual
savings for small business owners could be marginal at best and
there may be requirements not related to health insurance in order
to sign up for Benefit Solutions GE's program, such already being a
GE Credit customer. AXcess News cautions small business owners
interested in alternative benefit programs to read the fine print
very carefully before signing any of these types of health
insurance programs. Often, alternative health benefit programs do
not include many health practitioners or the terms of coverage vary
from what the provider offers and the physician's practice actually
charges. Small business owners considering alternative health
benefit programs should ask for references of other small business
owners in their community that have signed up for the program to
find out if those small business owners are satisfied, especially
from their employees perspective, as extra charges levied at the
time of a medical visit fall upon the patient to pay, not the small
business owner.



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