Working in a small business can make you sick

One of the biggest problems with linking health care access to employment is it's unfair to employees of a small business.

This must be true, because whenever the subject of insuring everyone, or mandating employer coverage, comes up, small business starts whinging they can't afford it.

The whole argument is laid out here by Carolyn Kepcher (right), best known as the co-star fired by Donald Trump once he realized she was kith, not kin.

These days she bills herself as the "go-to source for working women" but working women apparently can't go to the doctor. Not if they're in a small business.

In a New York Daily News column she insists the coverage mandates of HealthyNY are "especially hard for small businesses to absorb."

Her polemic conflates HealthyNY, a voluntary program also open to the self-employed, and a 2006  San Francisco ordinance aimed at mandating employee coverage.

By describing $3-4 per check "health care surcharges" on San Francisco restaurant bills, she uses an argument against one coast to attack a program on the other. Neat trick.

The solution she proposes is "consumer-directed health plans," essentially non-insurance insurance, combining Health Savings Accounts with very high-deductible insurance plans. Works great if you don't get sick. Very Republican.

All this echoes the long-time arguments of the National Federation of Independent Businesses. Big businesses can take care of their people, small ones can't, and if you make them they'll never get big.

This argument has the benefit of truth behind it. Small businesses can't get good group rates. Their profit margins are often wafer-thin. The owners often go without coverage themselves to keep the doors open.

But is that an argument for impoverishing those with the get-up-and-go to work in (or own) a small business, or does it say something about the whole idea of health care as a business perk? 

We report, you decide. Catch Carolyn on Fox Business. She'll be the one spinning, empowering women by arguing against their health care.