SOLICITATION NOTICE
B -- SMALL BUSINESS RESEARCH USING LARGE DATABASES
- Notice Date
- 6/26/2006
- Notice Type
- Solicitation Notice
- NAICS
- 541618
— Other Management Consulting Services
- Contracting Office
- Small Business Administration, Office of Administration, Office of Procurement and Grants Management, 409 Third Street, S.W., 5th Floor, Washington, DC, 20416
- ZIP Code
- 20416
- Solicitation Number
- SBAHQ-06-Q-0014
- Response Due
- 7/27/2006
- Archive Date
- 7/27/2006
- Small Business Set-Aside
- Total Small Business
- Description
- Background: In August 2005, the Office of Advocacy released a study on small business benefits that reached the following conclusion (http://www.sba.gov/advo/research/rs224tot.pdf): Employees of small businesses have access to fewer benefits than do the employees of large businesses. Small and large businesses continue to provide benefits to their employees, but at a declining rate. Companies of all sizes have reduced the availability of health insurance to their employees due to the increasing cost associated with benefits in recent years. Access to retirement benefits is more prevalent among large firms than among small firms. The Office of Advocacy has conducted many studies on this topic (http://www.sba.gov/advo/research/wages.html). Small firms continue to be squeezed by higher health insurance premiums, as evidenced by annual surveys from the Kaiser Family Foundation (http://www.kff.org/insurance/7315/index.cfm), and small business owners continue to cite the cost and availability of insurance as the single most important problem that they face in the monthly Small Business Economic Trends published by the National Federation of Independent Business (for more information, see http://www.nfib.com/page/researchFoundation). Firms have reacted to rising health care costs in different ways. Many are beginning to offer high deductible health plans (HDHP) coupled with a health savings account (HSA) as a method of using consumer-driven options to control costs. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, more large firms than small firms are the early adopters of these HDHP?s and HSA's, which were created by the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003. Because these types of plans are relatively new, data are just beginning to emerge on their usage. (Another source of information on these and other plans is America?s Health Insurance Plans, which can be found at http://www.ahipresearch.org.) In terms of retirement plans, small firms are more likely to have defined-contribution versus defined-benefit plans. Yet, rising health care costs can mean that some small business owners must choose between providing their workers with health insurance or making contributions to their employee?s retirement savings plan. Providing such benefits can be essential to attracting qualified workers, especially as these smaller entities compete for labor with their larger counterparts. The Office of Advocacy seeks additional research in the area of small business benefits. Proposals could focus on health care, retirement, or some other form of employee compensation or benefit, and they should focus on data sources that contain firm-size information. (This is preferable to establishment-size data.) Possible data sources include, but are not limited to: the Current Population Survey, the Kaiser Family Foundation, the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, and the Survey of Income and Program Participation. Questions and answers for this procurement shall commence on July 10, 2006 and end on July 14, 2006. No questions after July 14, 2006. Questions MUST be email to the Contracting Specialist (sharonbrown@sba.gov). Fax or email proposals will not be accepted. Please provide the RFQ number in the subject line of your email for questions. NOTE: THIS PROCUREMENT IS A 100 PERCENT SMALL BUSINESS SET-ASIDE.
- Place of Performance
- Address: 409 3rd Street, SW., Suite 500, Washington, DC
- Zip Code: 20416
- Country: US
- Zip Code: 20416
- Record
- SN01077986-W 20060628/060626221007 (fbodaily.com)
- Source
-
FedBizOpps Link to This Notice
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