NEW YORK – An op-ed in Forbes earlier this week blasted
Obamacare for the impact it would deliver to small businesses.
Noting that 40% of small businesses have frozen hiring and
20% have reduced their workforce because of the law, Sally Pipes, president of
the Pacific Research Institute, wrote: “That’s not exactly the future President
Obama forecast in 2009…”
According to Pipes, the law will raise the price of
insurance without providing the choice that it promised, and the exchanges
“aren’t unfolding as planned” and may not be ready by the October 1 deadline
set by the law. “Creating these government-directed insurance marketplaces in
all 50 states plus the District of Columbia has proved far more complicated
than bureaucrats anticipated,” she wrote.
Meanwhile, as states rush to develop exchanges, plan choice
has become compromised. Last month, in fact, the federal government said that
every business owner shopping in the 33 federally run exchanges must choose one
plan for all of his company’s full-time employees.
“In some states, there may only be one choice for every
single small business in the state — as insurers have been reluctant to
participate,” Piper said.
An analysis of 11 states by the insurer WellPoint projects
that small-group premiums will increase by an average of 13% to 23%, a result
of mandates that eliminate annual or lifetime health-care spending and annual
deductibles that exceed $2,000 for an individual or $4,000 for a family.
“The Obama administration just announced that
they’d delay the implementation of the employer mandate, which would require
all businesses with more than 50 full-time employees to offer health insurance,”
Piper concluded. “Hopefully Obamacare’s small-business exchanges will be the
next component of the law to be delayed.”