NFIB: Health Law Isn’t Forcing Small Businesses To Drop Coverage

You’d expect the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) — a lobby that has practically aligned itself with the Republican party and is a co-plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act — to release a survey that substantiates the GOP’s most popular criticisms of the law: it’s a job killer that will force businesses to stop offering health care coverage. But that’s not the story the group’s latest report, One Year After Enactment Of PPCA, tells. Instead, the group’s survey of small businesses finds that less than half of employers are familiar with the law (which itself says something about what they think about its impact) and relatively few expect to drop coverage as a result of it:

– The number of small employers offering employee health insurance has not changed appreciably in the last 12 months, the post-PPACA passage time frame.

– The number of small employers offering employee health insurance is likely to change little over the next 12 months. Virtually no small employer now offering expects to drop health insurance in the next year and virtually no nonoffering employer expects to add it in that time frame.

–[M]ost small employers indicate they will not drop unless a large number of employees leave. The survey did not ask if they had actually calculated the possible cost savings of doing so. Nor did it ask if they would drop their health insurance following a competitor’s lead.

– 18 percent of small-business owners claim to be “very familiar” with the highly publicized health legislation. Another 40 percent report they are “somewhat familiar” and another 24 percent say they are “not too familiar” with it. The remainder, also 18 percent, are “not at all familiar” with the new law.

The report does put a negative spin on business opinion. It concludes that “[s]mall employers think the consequences of PPACA will almost uniformly be negative. Those who have at least some familiarity with PPACA expect the new law will increase taxes, will increase the federal deficit, will not slow health insurance cost increases, will not ease their administrative burdens, and will not improve public health.”

But those fears sound a lot more like GOP talking points than a measured analysis, and they echo the concerns some employers expressed about day one, month one, and year one of the law. Those doomsday predictions have not come to pass, and if the law is implemented well, they likely never will — at least not to the degree many imagine.