POINT/COUNTERPOINT COLUMN: Pro small business, pro health care reform

As a small business owner in Virginia, I've experienced first-hand how our broken health care system kills jobs and hurts families. My family and I own a retail business selling watches and clocks. We had around 25 locations all over Virginia and Maryland with approximately 150 employees. The high cost of health care began crushing our business many years ago. Like many small business owners, I considered my employees as family and struggled to provide health care for them despite the cost eating up our already small margins. Finally, with health care eating up 30 percent of my payroll, I had to drop health coverage for myself and all my employees. In the past two years we've had to close 11 locations and lay off 90 of our employees because of the bad economy and the high cost of health care.

I feel blessed to live in America. My family came here from Afghanistan because we knew that America is a place where hard work is rewarded. But my story illustrates that our broken health care system is putting the American dream out of reach for Virginia's small businesses. Health insurance premiums for my business were astronomically high because as a small business, we don't have the negotiating power those big corporations do. A 2006 study issued by the Commonwealth Fund, reports that firms with 1 to 9 workers (the vast majority of small businesses) paid adjusted premiums 18 percent higher than those paid by firms with 1,000 or more workers. The National Center for Health Statistics reports that average premiums are currently $11,300 for family coverage at small businesses with fewer than 50 employees. Many small businesses cannot afford coverage at all and we are left to the mercy of the individual insurance market. Here insurance companies can drop coverage when folks get sick, refuse to provide health insurance at all and even deny paying for coverage because of "pre-existing conditions."

For over a year my family and I went without health care, so I anxiously watched as the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate voted on health insurance reform over the past several weeks. I was disheartened as I watched politician after politician stridently defend the status quo and claim that health insurance reform would kill jobs and ration care. If those politicians spent one week in my shoes, they would know just how much our current system kills jobs. I welcome any politician to spend one day in my shoes as I worried every minute for my kids because we didn't have health insurance, then they'll really know how much our current system rations care.

Everyone is worried about jobs and the economy right now. Those of us who own and operate Virginia's small businesses know that health insurance reform will help us create jobs. Health insurance reform will give small businesses like mine tax credits to help afford health insurance. Families like mine will no longer be at the mercy of insurance companies in the individual market. We'll be able to buy affordable coverage through a health insurance exchange that helps pool small business employees, families and individuals with other uninsured Virginians to help us get cheaper rates. Small businesses will not be charged more for health insurance just for being small. Finally, health insurance reform will reduce our national budget deficit. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the senate bill would reduce the federal deficit by $127 billion over the first decade, and by $650 billion over the second decade.

Given these facts, I can only say that a vote against health reform is a vote to charge all small businesses a "status quo tax" that will kill jobs.

Health care spending is the biggest driver of our federal budget deficit over the long term. We need health insurance reform now so that our small businesses can start creating jobs again and to reduce the budget deficit at the same time. The men and women who work for and own Virginia's small businesses know we can't afford the political games played by politicians and corporate lobbyists. If you want to kill jobs and kill Virginia's small businesses and bankrupt our families, then kill health insurance reform and raise the "status quo tax." But I will urge Senators Webb and Warner to vote in favor of health insurance reform as a sign of their support for small businesses and the promise of the American dream.

Yaqub Zargarpur lives in Woodbridge and owns Fashion Time, a retail timepiece business with locations throughout northern Virginia, Washington D.C. and Maryland.