With Friends Like This

The Republican Party is ostensibly the party of business, and it certainly has burnished that image in Utah.  Which makes you wonder just what Rep. Carl Wimmer is trying to prove with his campaign against the federal health care initiatives.

In case you hadn't noticed, if you're a small business, health costs are a big burden.  If you provide health insurance, you already know what I mean.  But the burden is there even if you don't.  First, if you don't provide health insurance, you're competing for talent with those that do, and guess who wins.  Second, if you aren't providing health insurance, chances are your employees don't have any, which makes it more likely they'll get sick and either miss work altogether or (worse) show up to work sick.  Third, lack of health insurance imposes a hidden tax on all of us that I call The Bankruptcy Tax.  In spite of the current downturn, the single biggest cause of personal bankruptcy remains medical bills (And a significant cause of several, recent corporate bankruptcies has been the increasing burden of medical costs on pension plans.).  Have you ever had to write off bills because the customers filed bankruptcy?  Chances are it was medical bills that drove them there.

So before you start screaming about "socialized medicine" and "federal interference", take a look at the costs the current system is imposing on you.  They're big.

Which leads me back to wondering just what Wimmer is trying to prove.  Maybe he's trying to distract attention from his "special relationship" with Rick Koerber.