Affordable Health Insurance

eBay Point-of-View:

• eBay is an enabler and a destination for small businesses. We work hard to keep the best interests of eBay's small business community in mind, and care passionately about policy decisions that impact their success.

• eBay's “army of entrepreneurs“ faces the same challenges that impact all small business people, including access to quality and affordable private sector health insurance.

• We believe that energizing a marketplace by giving more consumers access to more choices for individual health insurance spurs competition and innovation.

Impact:

• “A new generation of small business owners” - As the eBay trading platform provides opportunity for hundreds of thousands of budding entrepreneurs across America, more and more eBay sellers would like to quit their “day jobs” to run their eBay businesses full-time.

• In many cases, the only hurdle keeping eBay business operators from making that leap to self-employment is access to affordable health insurance.

Background:

• Health insurance is regulated on the state-level, resulting in a patchwork of 50 different state restrictions on the type of insurance an issuer must offer to its customers.

• The high cost of complying with 50 different state regulations has made it nearly impossible for self-employed individuals to find affordable private health insurance under current law.

Please Take Action!

• We urge you to support federal legislation that would help small business people get better access to quality, affordable health insurance.