10 Years Later: On Small Businesses and Obamacare

The Houston Courant ^ | 12/7/2020 | H. Arriaga

[The Houston Courant]

The Affordable Care Act—with its promise of reining in costs—was passed into law more than 10 years ago, yet today small businesses are still fighting the rising price tag of health care. One owner of a local restaurant chain here in Austin has told me that it’s precisely the flaws of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that make providing access to health care so burdensome for small business owners and their employees.

With slightly more than 50 employees, he explained how he feels helpless with ACA in place. Countless times, employees have asked how to enroll in marketplace insurance and how the expenses will be covered, only to find that rising premiums make affording coverage impossible. While eligible for insurance, most of his employees do not take it.

Across the private sector, businesses like his that employ between 50-99 people on average have only a 66.6% take-up rate for enrollment. Furthermore, some of his employees find themselves in the Medicaid gap and see no affordable alternative option.

This business owners explains, “my employees work hard and often are fighting their way out of poverty. There should be no reason why they do not have access to care that does not financially burden our business, let alone themselves too.”

[humblegunner]

What stopped you from posting the whole thing?
Need a few blog hits?

[WVNan]

Well Humble, Let me use the headline to bring up a related topic. Has anyone wondered why it’s only “small” businesses that are targeted over the Covid19? Think about it and recall Agenda 21. What was the end goal for the U.S. and probably the world? Take back all the land and herd all the people into closed cities and only the largest “central” business allowed. No one will own anything, especially a business. If you never watched the videos, do so and see how close we are and what the future will bring.

[texas booster]

If small businesses have 50 or more full-time employees and do not aid employees in the purchase of health insurance, they can face up to $2,300 to $3,000 in penalties.

As a result, some businesses were incentivized to outsource or reduce their labor force below 50 individuals to evade the employer mandate; these measures can spiral into unemployment and loss of productivity.

While individuals did not have to pay the "individual mandate penalty" in 2019, small businesses did pay a penalty.

If the people backing Harris-Biden regain power in DC, expect that that individual mandate will reappear and possibly be charged retroactively to 2019 - no matter what the law states about individual protections.

[Still Thinking]

Promises should be binding; IOW if they predict/promise a decrease in premiums, and then the premiums increase, the legislation so justified should automatically sunset. If they propose to abridge and rape our civil rights in some way they’ve so far overlooked (not many of those), with the justification that they “need it to fight terrorism or child porn or whatever”, and end up using it 98% of the time on other things, that should result in automatic repeal (and some form of sanction on whoever voted in favor).