Letter to the Editor: Prescription Price Shock is Crushing Small Businesses

To the Editor:

As President of the Greater Georgia Black Chamber of Commerce, representing businesses across the metro Atlanta region, I see daily the strain rising healthcare costs place on small employers. Too often, the conversation around prescription drug prices centers only on patients. But small businesses are quietly absorbing the same unsustainable burden.

For many locally owned enterprises, offering health benefits is becoming harder each year. Prescription drug costs are a major driver of higher insurance premiums, forcing owners into impossible choices: reduce coverage, shift costs to employees, or drop benefits entirely. None of these options serve workers or the long-term health of a business.

The impact deepens when a small business owner becomes ill. Unlike large corporations, small businesses depend heavily on the owner’s day-to-day involvement. High out-of-pocket medication costs can quickly deplete savings, while time away disrupts operations, cuts revenue, and can even threaten the business’s survival.

Employees face similar challenges. Many are forced to choose between filling prescriptions and paying for essentials like rent or groceries. When medications go unaffordable, health declines, absenteeism rises, and productivity suffers. This is a burden that small businesses cannot bear.

If we are serious about supporting the backbone of our economy, we must address excessively high prescription drug prices. Congress should act to ensure Americans do not pay more for medications than people in comparable countries. Strengthening and codifying a Most Favored Nation pricing model would be a meaningful step toward affordability.

We also need greater transparency in drug pricing and safeguards against unjustified price hikes that outpace inflation. These reforms would provide real relief to small business owners, their employees, and communities.

The stakes are too high for inaction. Our small businesses and the workers who power them cannot afford to wait.

Melinda Sylvester

Fayetteville