Sylvester Smith: Obamacare Means More Pain For Arkansas Small Businesses

Arkansas small business owners always seem to keep getting the short end of the stick from Washington. Most recently, the Obamacare rollout debacle has added a whole new wave of uncertainty for small businesses and all Arkansans. Perhaps even more troubling, no one in Washington seems to have an answer.

It’s time our elected representatives started facing facts. Obamacare remains broken, even after almost four years since the law took effect. We’ve heard the reports come in from all over the country: individuals getting their health insurance cancelled, on top of premiums continuing to rise. For small businesses, the news gets even worse, as the recent delays and other actions taken by President Obama’s administration are only adding to the uncertainty and confusion that they’ve been feeling since the law’s passage.

Consider that small businesses continue to face skyrocketing premiums, with no relief in sight. The online exchange program for small businesses, called the SHOP exchange, has already been delayed for a whole year. So while the cost for small businesses to insure their workers keeps rising, most will be unable to take advantage of the small business health insurance tax credit. And to top it off, the Health Insurance Tax kicked in on January 1st. The HIT tax, as we like to call it, is a new tax in Obamacare that will hit small businesses and individuals particularly hard. This new tax, which is essentially a tax on small businesses who offer insurance to their employees, will result in an about a $500 yearly premium increase for a family of four.

The small business community in Arkansas and across the country has been clamoring for real health reform. What that means for us is controlling the ever-increasing costs of health insurance premiums. Indeed since 1986 our small businesses have told us that increasing healthcare costs are the number one challenge they face. That should have been the goal of health reform from the very beginning. Instead, what we’re seeing are even more costs in the form of premium increases, tax increases, and new regulations and mandates that small business owners just can’t afford.

Small business owners are viewed as the backbone of our country’s economy for a good reason: They tend to have a real stake in the communities they serve and take that responsibility seriously. For most small businesses, their employees are like family, and that’s what’s really getting lost in all the back and forth between politicians in Washington: The fact that Obamacare is forcing small businesses into impossible choices of continuing to provide health insurance coverage, cut back hours for workers, lay off staff, or fold up their businesses altogether. And it’s a choice that all too many small business owners have to face today. That’s not what government should be about, and Washington needs to understand that.

Without significant changes, this law will continue to cause problems for the small-business economy. Small-business owners support continued efforts to remedy the most harmful provisions in the law that are already impacting their businesses and their employees. But enough is enough. Arkansans need our elected officials to stand up for small businesses, workers and families, before Obamacare does any more harm. People like Senator Mark Pryor, who voted for and continues to support the law, have got to start doing more than half-measures and delays that are only adding to the already considerable burden that small business owners must bear every day. That’s why NFIB – the Voice of Free Enterprise – recently began a new campaign to educate Arkansans on the impact of Obamacare on our small business community.

We don’t need more empty promises coming from our Washington representatives. What we need are pragmatic solutions that undo the damage caused by Obamacare and help to lower healthcare costs for Arkansas families. It’s time for Washington to hit the reset button on the law and pass meaningful legislation that actually helps our job creators and the hardworking men and women they employ.

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Editor’s note: Sylvester Smith, the author of this guest commentary, is Arkansas state director of the National Federation of Independent Business, which represents more than 4,100 small businesses in Arkansas.