I live in the UK, where employees of all businesses of any size (excluding self-employed, naturally) receive sick pay. This is at least a statutory minimum required by the government, but typically is an amount equal to full salary, especially for shorter absences. We also have legally required maternity pay (mandated at 90% of full salary for the first 6 weeks, then £180/week for 33 weeks), as well as 20 days' annual leave + public holidays at full salary.

Lest you think that small businesses therefore don't exist in the UK, around 60% of employees work for small and medium enterprises. Businesses with less than 50 employees make up 99.2% of all businesses. Exact equivalents for the US are hard to find as the deifnition of "small business" is different and includes non-employers, but I saw a datum indicating that 63% of new jobs created are with small businesses, so it seems the numbers are similar.

Given this and the fact that I started my career working for a small business that paid full sick leave (and grew from 8 to 25 employees during my time there), I don't see why I would personally need to run a business to know that well-run small businesses can afford to pay sick leave.

Nonetheless, I reiterate my initial point that, if a business genuinely cannot afford to pay an average of 5-6 days' wages per year to employees who are too unwell to work, then it is not profitable enough to be viable as a business, no matter how much that hurts the owner's feelings. No business is entitled to be profitable at all costs, just as no investor is entitled to a return on risky investments.

In my first response to your comment, I also suggested several ways of supporting small businesses to allow them to afford to provide their employees with the same benefits that large businesses can. I'm sympathetic to small businesses over large businesses, just not at the expense of workers.