clipped from blogs.wsj.com

Barack Obama shed some new light on his health-care proposals this weekend, suggesting a $6 billion-a-year plan to offer tax credits to small businesses offering health insurance to employees.

Our Washington Wire blog notes that Hillary Clinton had made a similar proposal for small businesses, whose problems providing health insurance are among the biggest hurdles to universal coverage. The big annual Kaiser Family Foundation survey on employee health benefits found that 59% of firms with 3-199 workers offered health benefits in 2007, compared with 99% of firms with 200 or more workers. The issue was more dire for firms with 3-9 employees, where 45% offered coverage.