"Annually in February, my assistant and I go through the painstaking work of getting bids from other insurance carriers, since our average increase has been 28 percent every year over the last four years. This year, our increase is 40 percent and what bothers me the most is that the coverage and service gets worse! A particular frustration of mine is that insurance carriers move at one speed: their own.

"In addition to the hassle of just maintaining affordable coverage, my time is wasted spending countless hours on the health-care renewal process. It takes two of us three days to fill out all the necessary forms for underwriting. This cuts into production time and other areas in which I could be producing a quality product for my customers. We are facing a crisis in manufacturing by losing jobs to China; therefore, it is vital that I work to keep our firm competitive.

"Knowing that providing health insurance is necessary to me for both business and personal reasons, and knowing that I cannot increase prices to my customers an extra 40 percent in order to absorb the cost, I continue to offer health insurance benefits, despite the growing cost to the business. Our business has absorbed the cost every year. We have only passed a total of five dollars a week onto our employees over the last four years. I am at the point where I may have to increase our employees' share or stop paying for their disability insurance...."

Vice President of Operations, Trotter Machine, testifying before the U.S. House Committee on Small Business, March 5, 2003