WASHINGTON – In advance of tomorrow’s Finance Committee hearing on small business health care solutions, today Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Olympia J. Snowe (R-Maine), Chairman and Ranking Member of the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, sent a letter to the leaders of the Finance Committee outlining the principles which should guide tax-based small business health care legislation. Kerry and Snowe, both senior Members of the Finance Committee, held the 110th Congress’ first hearing on addressing the health care crisis for small business owners, their employees and the self-employed.

“Small businesses have been demanding meaningful solutions to help them provide quality, affordable health care coverage for their workers,” said Kerry. “A bipartisan tax-based policy that follows these principles can bolster reform initiatives in states like Massachusetts and provide America’s 27 million small businesses the support they need at the federal level.”

“Access to affordable health insurance is the single greatest point of concern on the part of small businesses in Maine and Massachusetts, and across the country,” said Snowe. “I applaud the Senate Finance Committee for highlighting this issue and working to fashion a bipartisan, compromise proposal that will help to reduce the ranks of our nation's uninsured. We’re at a pivotal juncture on this issue, and we must forge the political will in the months ahead to take action to provide relief from skyrocketing health insurance premiums while increasing access for small businesses to affordable health insurance.”

To read the letter that Chairman Kerry and Ranking Member Snowe sent sent to Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Ranking Member Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), click here.