In my travels through Nebraska one of the main complaints I hear from citizens is that the cost of health insurance is going through the roof. It’s true. If we don’t do something to help small businesses cope with the costs of health care, soon we will have an entire workforce without health insurance coverage.

The figures are staggering even in Nebraska where there are at least 30 thousand small businesses and only 31 percent offer health benefits.

Health insurance premiums are experiencing double digit inflation annually and small businesses can’t keep up with the costs. As a result, fewer employers are offering health coverage and fewer employees are covered. The continuing problem of skyrocketing health care costs is a grave threat to our working families.

Several of us in the United States Senate have come up with a plan to control those costs and expand health insurance coverage for small businesses and their employees that is winning praise from business and insurance groups.

I signed on as the lead co-sponsor of “the Health Insurance Marketplace Modernization and Affordability Act of 2005,” a bi-partisan bill designed to lower health insurance costs by stimulating market reforms and promoting competition while allowing trade associations the ability to offer group insurance plans for employees.

The bill, S. 1955, would allow business and trade associations to band their members together and offer group health coverage on a national or statewide basis. The group plans would be in direct response to runaway costs that are driving many employers and families from comprehensive health insurance. Since 2000, group premiums for family coverage have grown nearly 60 percent.

The bill would enhance the market leverage of small groups as well as individuals by giving associations a meaningful role on a level playing field with other group health plans; streamlining the current confusing, overlapping and varying state regulations; preserving the primary role of the states in health insurance oversight and consumer protection; making lower-cost health plan options available; and achieving meaningful reform without a huge federal price tag.

According to U.S. Senator Mike Enzi, R-WY., Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee and the author of the bill, the legislation will benefit families struggling to keep their current insurance as well as those already priced out of their plans. The bill is the result of more than a year of negotiations and responds to pleas from the small business community to be allowed to pool their members and provide group health insurance, called Small Business Health Plans (SBHPs). The bill will also include safeguards to protect against adverse effects that could result if new group plans were given a blanket exemption from state-based oversight and enforcement.

I will be reporting back to you as our legislation progresses. Help is on the way.