This has been a tricky issue. In member surveys, we get mixed views from small business owners. There's no question that many small firms struggle to have employee benefit plans that are anywhere close to being as generous as those for positions in the government or in large corporations, so there could be an equalizing effect with the creation of these programs. In some cases, employers are happy to dump their costs onto government, and I worry that this may happen, with some companies basically exiting the provision of coverage as the government picks up the tab.
The other big thing that business owners know is that with all of these major programmatic changes, there are new costs. We know that governments often look to small and medium-sized businesses to pick up these costs, as we've seen in recent days.
It isn't an easy calculation. In the last member survey that I showed, there was mixed support for the addition of a pharmacare program—