Release Date: 6/20/2004

Health insurance is something Jeff Walther would love to have.

But owning a small business that's only in its third year of existence makes it a little bit hard to pay high premiums.

"I can't commit to $300 or $400 a month," Walther said. He and his wife, Roberta, own Computer Concepts, which is a Waynesboro personal computer repair and sales shop. The couple bought the store last fall.

They're not alone in their lack of insurance. Only 48 percent of Virginia businesses with fewer than 50 employees offer insurance benefits to their employees, according to a Gannett News Service analysis. For firms in the Commonwealth that employ more than 50 people, 99 percent offer health coverage.

Walther came from a job where he could get insurance through work. But now he has to worry -- at least until his business is established and he can afford coverage -- about what might happen.

"In the long run, you never know what unforeseen catastrophic injuries might happen," Walther said.

Garland Heatwole's is one of those small Virginia companies that is able to provide health care benefits for its employees. Heatwole is a partner in the company that runs Sharon Book Store and Waynesboro Rapid Print, both in downtown Waynesboro.

With 12 employees, the company uses a group plan through Anthem. But they had to switch companies last year because the premiums were getting too high.

"We've been with a number of different groups, so far Anthem has been the cheapest," Heatwole said. "The last one we were with was more money, and it got to the point where it was more than we could afford."

But the tradeoff was passing some of the cost to employees. Their deductibles went up by $250 a year, Heatwole said.

One solution that has been proposed to help small businesses would be to allow them to band together across state lines and form "association health plans." Those would be overseen by federal labor rules instead of state rules and would allow small businesses to negotiate lower rates by increasing the size of their pools.

It's an idea that Walther said would be appealing to him and might help his business' ability to cover health insurance.