Jack Kingston: “I want to talk about this as a former insurance agent. I sold property and casualty insurance to small businesses all…”

“I want to talk about this as a former insurance agent. I sold property and casualty insurance to small businesses all over Georgia before I came to Congress. I was not in the health care business, but quite frequently my clients would come to me and say, Can you help us with health care? Can you point us in the right direction? So I have some knowledge of it on the ground from the perspective of a pet store, a barber shop, a brick mason, small employers with 5 to 15 people. What their problem is, they have been priced out of the health care business because we insist through state-mandated benefit that they have to buy a Cadillac insurance plan. They cannot buy a stripped down Toyota; they have to buy the Cadillac with all of the options. That is what we are doing. Because of that, that brick mason with seven employees says to his employees, We cannot do health care any more. If your wife or somebody in your family cannot put you on as a dependent, you do not have any health care. What this plan does is it gets uninsured employees back in the business of health insurance, those employees who are making too much money for Medicaid, for example, and workers comp is only going to cover them on the job. This gives them access to the health care.”