It just doesn’t make any business sense.
The owner of New York’s famed independent bookstore, The Strand — which spends more than $1 million a year on health care for its 225 workers — yesterday joined a growing chorus of businesses objecting to the House-backed health-care overhaul.
“We already have a great plan” under private carrier Cigna, insisted Nancy Bass Wyden, granddaughter of Strand founder Benjamin Bass.
“The way the House bill is now, our costs would increase,” she said, adding that they already jumped 18 percent from last year. “Nothing in the bill has costs going down.”
According to Karen Ignagni, president and chief executive of America’s Health Insurance Plans, an insurers trade group, the House bill “fails to bend the health-care cost curve and breaks the promise that those who like their current coverage can keep it.”
And that doesn’t sit well with Bass Wyden, whose shop is a haven for seekers of rare and hard-to-find titles.
“The American way is competition,” she said. “But the House bill has us handcuffed.
“We want to stay with our great health care.”