NFIB members spoke out for
hundreds of thousands of small business owners
at a Capitol Hill Press conference yesterday,
urging Congress to reject Patients Bill of
Rights legislation introduced by Sen. Ted
Kennedy, D-Mass.
Richard Gallo, owner of
the Office Outlet in Indiana, Pa., Lynn Scherr
Bowles, executive vice president of Scherr
Refrigeration in Richmond, Va., and Ann Casey,
co-owner of Parcel Place in Baltimore, Md.,
spoke to Main Street's primary concern: the high
cost of health care.
My husband and I are
only two of the hundreds of thousands of small
business owners and employees who would be
stripped of our coverage if this bill should
pass, says Casey. The only 'rights' this bill
would confer on my husband and me is the right
to lose our health coverage.
The press
conference was sponsored by Sen. Don Nickles,
R-Okla., and Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., who have
introduced legislation to expand coverage for
the uninsured and improve health care quality.
Another NFIB member who spoke, Gallo, said that
the high cost of health care already prevents
him from being able to afford coverage for his
employees and family.
I am a small
businessman with seven employees and a family of
four children, says Gallo. The cost of providing
health insurance for my employees, say nothing
of my own family, is too expensive for me, so we
go without. Every day I pray to God that nothing
will happen to any of
us.
7.13.1999
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