5 More Minutes With... Karen Kerrigan

Karen Kerrigan president and CEO of the Small Business & Entrepreneurship Council, is a long time advocate for entrepreneurship in Washington, DC. At the council, she has worked to establish policy initiatives and has been especially busy keeping on top of relevant legislation this year. Recently, Kerrigan spoke with executive editor Daria Meoli about the future of health care legislation and what it will mean for small business.

DM: Is there a potential health care bill on the horizon that would benefit small businesses that are struggling to afford health care?

KK: The “big Bill” seems pretty much dead for now. From our perspective, is a good thing, because it just had too many things in it that would raise costs for small business owners. There is some conversation around a couple of things that can be passed on a bipartisan basis and then be signed by the President. So we have to take that political reality into account for this discussion. Under those terms, there is further consideration still being given to tax credits that would include individuals and perhaps some type of small business tax credit as well as tax parity for the self employed. Giving them full tax parity meaning they can deduct their health insurance costs. So that always continues to be critical for self employed people. 

There is still talk about some type of pooling for small business owners. From our perspective we’d like to see small businesses being able to pool through their associations or through their organizations that they belong to. But even if the federal government puts together some type of exchange for small business owners, the key to making that exchange work is that it not be highly regulated. The government shouldn’t set these minimum benefit requirements because that would do is it would drive coverage costs up for small business owners. 

The pooling or exchanges also would allow for some type of national insurance plan, which means the state lines that currently exist for small businesses would be brought down. However, again, if that is tightly regulated, it could drive up costs.