Congress should extend ACA’s enhanced premium tax credits and open the government
Small businesses want to provide health benefits to their employees because it promotes a healthy and productive workforce and allows them to compete for talent with larger enterprises.
However, the escalating cost of health insurance continues to prevent many small businesses from providing group coverage to their employees. This drives small business owners and their employees to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace.
For solo entrepreneurs, the ACA marketplace often is the only way they can procure coverage.
Politicians have been grappling with the ACA’s enhanced premium tax credits before and during the government shutdown. These enhanced credits are set to expire at the end of the year, and should that happen, health insurance premiums will increase dramatically for a large number of small business owners and their employees.
Many will face the prospect of becoming uninsured, putting them at great risk should they need medical care. Entrepreneurs may need to close their businesses simply because health insurance is unaffordable, and they do not want to face the prospect of financial ruin because they are not insured.
Federal legislators immediately should extend the ACA’s enhanced premium tax credits before small businesses on the marketplace are forced to confront the prospect of unaffordable premiums. Congress must then begin to tackle health insurance in a comprehensive manner, because the system does not work for small businesses and many others.
Politicians must bring industry stakeholders and health insurance advocates together to formulate a plan that finally stabilizes the cost of health insurance. It will take collaboration between policymakers, insurance companies, medical providers, drug companies, the small business community, patient advocates, and others to begin addressing a system that each year seems to offer fewer benefits for more money.
It should not take a government shutdown to finally prompt legislators from both sides of the aisle to come together and tackle this important issue.
Speaking of our destructive government shutdown, let’s hope it is over by the time you read this column. The government shutdown is terrible on so many levels, and for small business owners who crave certainty, the failure of our government to properly function may cause them to think twice before expanding.
Politicians must recognize the harm this government shutdown is doing to so many Americans and immediately stop the nonsense. Nobody truly benefits when policymakers hurl insults at one another. The economic climate for small businesses is not improved by over-the-top rhetoric and hyperbole.
Politicians must open the government, extend the enhanced premium tax credits, and prioritize fixing our health care system so that small business owners and their employees do not have to pay escalating and excessive premiums simply to have access to medical care.
• Elliot Richardson is co-founder and president of the Small Business Advocacy Council.