A new web site launched recently by a coalition of representative groups for 12 million employers with 80 million workers, coalesces the entire debate on America’s healthcare crisis.

Nearly six of every 10 Americans without healthcare come from families where someone either owns or works for a small business. The skyrocketing costs of providing healthcare for employees is the No. 1 problem facing small-business owners across the nation.

Small businesses have been consistently hit with double-digit premium increases for the past four years, with some paying between 25 percent and 50 percent more this year alone. As premiums rise, many small-business owners are in the unenviable position of having to drop coverage all together in order to keep their doors open.

There is a solution at hand, one in which the launch of www.ahpsnow.com is seeking to promote, and one which is gaining more and more bipartisan support in Congress every day.

“As complicated an issue this might seem to people, the economics of the health care crisis is very simple,” said Carolyn Logue, state director for the 15,000-member Washington state chapter of the National Federation of Independent Business. “Federal law prohibits small-business owners from reaching across state lines in order to form large associations with other small-business owners for the purpose of purchasing healthcare and obtain the same economies-of-scale savings enjoyed by large corporation and big labor unions.”

Logue said federal law also allows large corporations and labor unions to avoid adhering to the “innumerable” healthcare mandates of 50 different states, giving them just one set of rules to abide by, which substantially lowers administrative costs.

Further information on Association Health Plans is available at www.ahpsnow.com.