Small business opinion: Jobs now, health care later
As the CEO of Consero Group, a small business in the executive events industry, I feel strongly about the company’s responsibility to provide a subsidized health care plan to our staff.
While Consero’s employees are a fairly healthy bunch, they ought to protect themselves with health insurance, and I consider our facilitation of that effort to be part of the duty of care we owe them. For that reason, I am generally supportive of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. And as a former practicing lawyer, I think that the Supreme Court’s recent 5-4 decision upholding the law was legally sound. But given the current fragile state of the economy, and the persistence of high unemployment, I wonder if this may be the wrong time for the burdens that the law imposes on fast-growing small businesses.
The law offers some valuable benefits to very small businesses, including tax credits for some companies that offer insurance to staffs of fewer than 25 employees. These credits reduce the burden of providing insurance to a mere administrative headache, making it much easier to protect employees. As companies cross the 25-person mark, those credits evaporate, leaving the law with virtually no impact. However, as companies expand to the 50-employee level, the law requires them to provide affordable and sufficiently comprehensive insurance or pay stiff
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