Ask an Expert: The good, bad of Obama's health care plan

— -- Q: What's the deal with the Obama health care plan? Should small business support it? — Valerie

A: Small business may have more at stake in this health care debate than any other constituency. Consider: According to a report by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, roughly 46 million Americans are without health insurance, and of those, more than half — 26 million — are small business owners, employees and their dependents.

Why is that?

Of course you and I know the answer — cost. But even so, it was a bit surprising at just how much of a burden healthcare is for American small business; a new study from the White House Council of Economic Advisers found that small business pays as much as 18% more for health insurance than large companies. And that is why these next statistics fall into the "'not-surprising-whatsoever" category:

• Fewer than half of all small businesses with three to nine employees even offer health insurance to their employees, while

• 99% of large companies with 200 workers or more do

So President Obama hit the nail on the head when he said recently that small businesses "are getting crushed by skyrocketing healthcare costs."

No kidding. The real question is what to do about it.

Now, I am no health care policy wonk, but you don't have to be one to understand a few things that make intuitive sense.

The first is, the so-called "public option" seems like a good idea. As business owners, we understand competition. We know that it makes us sharper and often drives down prices. As such, that would seem to be one of the greatest benefits of an affordable public healthcare insurance option; competition would make the entire system more efficient and affordable.

The contrarian opinion that a public option is either unaffordable or will drive out private healthcare insurers is a bugaboo that does not carry weight when examined closely. As Josh Greenman noted in the New York Daily News last month, there are government/public options that compete with private options in plenty of sectors of the economy, and not only do they work, but they often make the entire system better.