I’m Betty Jo Toccoli, and I’m the owner of a small business.  Health care is a struggle for me to provide for my employees.  I’m also President of the California Small Business Association.  Every day, my phone rings, people seeking help as small business owners in the state of California to find or be able to afford to keep health care for their employees.  This is a major issue for us.  Health care reform is not only needed, we want to work to make it happen.

For example, some of the things that happen to us is that if we find a product that we can afford and then we have an employee that has a family member or themselves that has a major catastrophic illness, this can affect not only the production of our business but it can also affect their financial future.

So we want to work with the governor because health care reform is necessary for California to move ahead and for small business to be able to create more jobs.