Biden stresses health care reform need for small businesses

WASHINGTON (CNN) - Vice President Joe Biden tried to rekindle the suddenly faltering momentum for health care reform Friday, warning a group of small business owners that a failure to act soon would have catastrophic consequences for the private sector.

Biden made his pitch as a senior administration health care official, Nancy-Ann DeParle, huddled with Capitol Hill Democrats struggling to forge a consensus on a bill before the planned August congressional recess.

Health care reform is the "foremost economic and moral issue that this administration is determined to deal with," Biden told the business leaders at a meeting near the White House.

Premiums for employer-provided health insurance, he noted, have doubled in the past nine years - rising three times faster than wages.

As a result, small business owners are "being forced to make some very difficult and ... unnecessary choices," he said. They "are faced with deciding to provide coverage that is increasingly swallowing up more and more of their bottom line, not providing coverage at all, or having to raise the cost of the service or product they're selling, making them uncompetitive."