Health Reform Anniversary: The Republican Repeal Agenda Hurts Small Business
March 21, 2011
WASHINGTON DC – This week marks the one-year anniversary of the enactment of the health reform law. The Affordable Care Act is a winner for America's small businesses. It is currently helping small businesses by offering tax credits to firms that provide coverage to workers, and offering consumer protections that help small business workers buy coverage on their own. Once reform is fully enacted, small businesses will have access to the same affordable, high-quality care that large businesses provide.
Despite these advantages for small businesses, Republicans are blindly pursuing their ideologically driven efforts to repeal health reform. If they win, small businesses and their workers lose. The Republican repeal agenda would:
- Eliminate $40 billion in tax credits that help small businesses provide health insurance for workers;
- Prevent small businesses from banding together to get the benefits of a larger risk pool -- which benefits big business today.
- Cause small businesses to drop coverage by codifying price discrimination against sick workers. For many small businesses, if just one of their workers has a pre-existing condition, insurance companies will hike premiums for all workers, making coverage unaffordable for the business;
- Stifle entrepreneurship. They would return to the old health care system – where millions of Americans are "locked" in their jobs in order to maintain health coverage. By eliminating affordable health care outside of jobs with large employers, Republicans would prevent these people from starting their own businesses.
(Source: House Roll Call vote 14, Senate Roll Call vote 9)
Today, Ways and Means Committee Ranking Member Sander M. Levin (D-MI) and Health Subcommittee Ranking Member Pete Stark (D-CA), criticized the Republican agenda for small businesses:
Ranking Member Levin: "Major health insurers are reporting increases in the number of small businesses purchasing health coverage -- because of health care reform. Republicans have been trying to strip away tax credits already benefiting small businesses around the country. In the process, they have failed to offer a single piece of legislation focused on job-creation. It is time they got their priorities straight."
Ranking Member Stark: "For all their talk about helping small businesses, the Republican agenda would be a disaster for small businesses trying to afford health care. Under the Republican plan, small businesses would face higher premiums and more difficulty finding affordable, quality coverage. It would also raise taxes for many small businesses."
For information on how the health reform law is helping small businesses, please visit: https://go.usa.gov/23u
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