Health care reform by Elizabeth Stawicki, Minnesota Public Radio

May 13, 2013

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ST. PAUL, Minn. Organizations representing small business have been among the sharpest critics of the federal health care overhaul. But the opposition is not universal. Some small business owners in Minnesota hope they'll find new health insurance options thanks to the law and MNSURE, the new state new online insurance marketplace it created.

Although businesses with fewer than 50 employees don't have to provide insurance to their workers under the federal health care law, business owners like Melissa Martinson nevertheless want to.

Martinson, president of Technomics Research, a small health care consulting business in Medina, Minn., began shopping for a company health plan for the firm's five employees about 10 years ago.

"Every year I'd go to a number of insurance brokers and say, 'what can you do for the company?'" she recalled. "And they would do some analysis and come back and say, 'well I'm sorry' but because of, you know, my age, they were unable to do anything better than we could get as individuals."

At 56, Martinson is a decade or two older than her youngest workers. She is healthy and has no pre-existing conditions, but her age alone raised the premium rates for a group plan.

As a result, it made more sense for the employees to buy individual plans, because they were less expensive. The business helped them shoulder the cost with profit sharing.

Martinson is hoping the new online insurance marketplace, MNSURE, will offer a small business health insurance plan that's more affordable than the current arrangement.

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Small businesses mull health care overhaul's impact