NFIB

NFIB conducted the first in a series of Fix-It Forums Thursday in El Paso, Texas, as part of Solutions Start Here, our aggressive healthcare campaign challenging lawmakers to create real and meaningful healthcare reform for small business.

The Fix-It Forums are designed to engage small business owners and their employees in conversations about their healthcare concerns. NFIB will take their stories back to lawmakers in Washington, D.C., to ensure the voice of small business is heard.

"When you fix healthcare for small business, you fix it for America," says NFIB President and CEO Todd Stottlemyer. "The leaders of this country must understand small business is an established and committed group demanding that lawmakers engage them as they seek healthcare solutions."

The Fix-It Forums are just one aspect of NFIB's Solutions Start Here campaign, which will drive home NFIB's message at the federal, state and grassroots level with activities including:

• Communicating with presidential candidates to ensure they fully consider small business as a significant voting bloc with a vested interest in healthcare reform;
• Inviting NFIB members, presidential candidates and legislators to sign a petition that reinforces the need to drive down healthcare costs while maintaining quality and choice. The petition will be submitted to the 111th Congress and the incoming administration;
• Moderating a series of healthcare reform forums that bring health policy leaders and economists together to discuss and debate the most crucial elements of healthcare reform; and
• Conducting two high-level research projects to better understand how small business responds to different policy suggestions so that we can determine what small business owners specifically want in various legislative proposals.

The strength of the small business sector and the prominence of the Latino community in Texas made it an ideal location for NFIB's first Fix-it Forum, held in conjunction with the State of Small Business Conference, co-sponsored by the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Participants at the forum were especially interested to learn about the unique issues facing the Texas Latino community, as the rate of growth for Hispanic-owned businesses is projected to be almost three times that of overall U.S. firms in the next 10 years.