Small Business Health Insurance In the wake of an increasing number of companies cutting health insurance benefits in a knee jerk reaction to save money, some forward thinking CEOs have come to realize that not only providing affordable health insurance to their workers, but actually increasing their benefits, can save the company money. It seems counter intuitive, but think about it. Sick employees are non-productive employees. Keep them healthy with adequate and affordable health insurance, and they will work more, and work harder (in theory). For eample the owner of a large Real Estate firm in Houston, Teas recently increased his company-provided health benefits by providing parity for mental and emotional health services. Says the CEO, It was not just the right thing to do, it made perfect sense from a business point of view, and the employees are more productive because of it.' Many other companies from oil companies to large-scale retailers are following suit. They see that equalizing health insurance this way can lead to less lost time at work and lower medical insurance reimbursements. According to the National Business Group on Health, a corporation can offer this parity on mental and emotional health with health insurance coverage for medical conditions and only raise their overall cost of Small Business by 1%. In the eample of the Real Estate firm, the CEO said in 2006 they spent 3.6 million dollars for health insurance for their 1000 employees and dependent family members. Approimately $40,000.00 of that went to mental or emotional health claims. An insignificant amount that he feels was certainly made up for in the increased productivity of the workers who needed to avail themselves of such health insurance coverage. According to the American Medical Association people with depression can lose almost 6 hours of work per week due to health problems associated with the disease. That is almost 4 times the amount of hours that is lost on average for physical health problems. Other published studies have shown that workers with untreated mental problems incur almost 5 times the amount of medical epenses than do non-depressed workers. Providing these workers with comprehensive health insurance that covers their mental health treatments only saves them and the company money in the long run.'