FARMINGTON – U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe held an open forum Tuesday to find out what is on the minds of small business men and women, and for the first hour it was all about rising insurance costs.

Brandi Cousineau Hau of Cousineau Inc. said the cost of property coverage for her family’s business went up 40 percent. The business had to cut back on some of the coverage because the increase was too much to handle, she said.

Donald Tranten of Tranten’s Too in Kingfield said he and his two brothers removed themselves from the health insurance plan to be able to provide insurance to employees. There are people making $7 or $8 an hour who can’t afford to buy insurance, he said.

Shelly Dawes, a representative of Star Security in Jay, said her company’s workers compensation and liability insurance costs have jumped since the Sept. 11 terrorists attacks in 2001. She attributed part of the rise to her company being classified as high risk. Star Security provides flaggers for road construction projects and telephone and electric crews.

In all, about 15 business people joined Snowe for the roundtable discussion at the University of Maine at Farmington.

Snowe, chairwoman of the U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business, told participants she has been holding forums regularly to gather input that she will take back to committee with the goal of finding solutions to their problems.

While the group discussed a number of issues, including inventory packaging and investing research dollars in Maine, insurance was the primary topic for the first hour.

Dawes noted that in addition to her company’s rising workers comp and liability insurance costs, the business has not been able to qualify to provide health insurance to employees because the business does not have at least 10 full-time employees working 12 months a year. Star Security currently has 44 full-time employees, she said, with hopes of increasing that to 100, but the majority only work seasonally.

“Most of the people I employ,” she said, “are on Medicaid,” which provides health benefits to children but not parents.

There is another plan that employees could pick up, Dawes said, but most of her employees cannot afford the $69 to $136 they would have to pay for insurance.

“It’s astronomical,” Snowe said.

Tranten agreed, saying that because of high health insurance costs “you’re constantly juggling.”

He said his company was looking at a 33 percent increase this year, raising his $90,000 annual cost to about $120,000 for the 17 employees covered, he said.

That’s amazing to face those kinds of increases, Snowe said.

Tranten told Snowe an educational program is needed to educate employees about how to responsibly manage their health care and their insurance plans.

Some people are using the emergency room as their clinic, Tranten said.

Jeff Laniewski, a representative of Synernet, a health care business, said his company is finding that while labor costs in Franklin County are advantageous, health care costs are greater than expected. The rising costs are pitting employee against employee, such as smokers vs. nonsmokers, he added.

The company has been forced to increase employees’ share of health insurance costs over the last few years, Laniewski said, noting that Synernet emphasizes to employees the importance of taking care of themselves.

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