NASE Highlights Need For Comprehensive Health Reform
"Cover The Uninsured Week" Bring Awareness Of Health Options For Children and
Families
Washington, D.C., March 25, 2009 -- The National Association for the Self-Employed (NASE) joins business owners,
organizations, educators and others who are banding together to raise awareness
for Cover the Uninsured Week. This week marks the seventh year of the
initiative under the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. It focuses on demonstrating
support for programs that seek to provide health insurance for the nine million
children living without coverage, like the State Children's Health Insurance
Program (SCHIP).
According to a recent online poll by the NASE, one
quarter of micro-business owners are currently uninsured, and almost
three-quarters (71 percent) have been uninsured at some time. Cost seems to be
the main barrier to insurance for the self-employed and micro-business owners,
with 29 percent of currently uninsured respondents citing "cost/affordability"
as the main reason they were without health insurance. Forty-four percent
indicated that the main reason they had been uninsured at some point in time was
because they were unable to afford premium costs.
While corporations are
able to deduct health insurance premiums as a business expense and forego FICA
(Social Security and Medicare) taxes on these expenses, the self-employed are
not. The Equity for Our Nation's Self-Employed Act (H.R. 1470), introduced
earlier this month, would eliminate this double digit disparity in the tax code,
which inhibits the self-employed from receiving a full deduction for health
insurance costs.
SCHIP was formed to assist children from low-income
families in gaining access to health insurance. But even among those parents who
received employer-sponsored coverage, rising health care costs mean many cannot
afford their portion of the premiums.
To search for Cover the
Uninsured Week events by state, go to http://covertheuninsured.org/events/. For more information on
making smart health care choices, visit the NASE-sponsored site, http://health.NASE.org.
About the NASE
The National Association for the Self-Employed (NASE) is the nation's leading resource for the self-employed and micro-businesses, bringing a broad range of benefits to help entrepreneurs succeed and to drive the continued growth of this vital segment of the American economy. The NASE is a 501(c) (6) nonprofit organization and provides big-business advantages to hundreds of thousands of micro-businesses across the United States. For more information, visit the association's Web site at www.nase.org. |