Many small business owners have been asking exactly how the health care bill will affect them. We don’t have a crystal ball but we will do our best to try to answer some of your most important questions.
What is the Timetable for Employers?
In 2011, the law will require individual and small group market plans to spend 80 percent of premium dollars on medical services. Large group plans have to spend at least 85%.
By 2014, employers who have more than 50 employees must offer health insurance benefits or pay penalties. Companies with 25 or fewer employees who meet certain wage requirements will also be able to get credits toward health insurance purchases.
By 2014, small-businesses owners, the self-employed and those who don't get work-provided coverage can get benefits through Small Business Health Options Programs (SHOPs). These state-run marketplace exchanges will work with carriers to pool insurance options, with the hope that costs will be lower for a larger, more powerful, group.
How Will It Affect Employees?
Unhappy employees don't have to stay in a job they hate for fear of losing health insurance for themselves or their children.
The new mandates say insurers can't deny coverage due to pre-existing conditions (effective this year for kids and in 2014 for adults).
Within six months of the bill becoming law, the workers can keep kids on their insurance policies until they're 26.
Small Business Owner Worries?
USA Today reports that there are many small-business owners who are already against the plan. Among those is Keith Ashmus, partner at a law firm in Cleveland. While his company has long-supported health care reform, he is against this one because of what he calls "insufficient attention to cost controls." He says it will increase premiums for 80 of his 110 employees who participate in the company's health care plan.
There are widely different views on how health care reform will affect entrepreneurship. For more coverage from USA Today, check out their reactions from small business owners .