Snohomish County Small Business: House health plan potentially costly

Reading the Wall Street Journal article by Janet Adam and Laura Meckler,  I couldn’t help but wonder what the impact would be on the Snohomish County small business community.

Headline:  “House Health Bill Penalizes All but Tiniest Employers for Not Providing Insurance”

Under the House measure, employers with payrolls exceeding $400,000 a year would have to provide health insurance or pay the 8% penalty. Employers with payrolls between $250,000 and $400,000 a year would pay a smaller penalty, and those less than $250,000 would be exempt. Certain small firms would get tax credits to help buy coverage.

The relatively low thresholds for penalties triggered the sharpest criticism yet from employer groups, who said the burden on small business is too high and doesn’t do enough to help them expand insurance coverage.

As a micro-small business owner the coverage for our personal health plan for my family has doubled in the last three years.   I can’t imagine the premiums for insuring our small staff, never mind having the potential penalty hovering over a small business owner if they meet certain thresholds that the House Democrats are trumpeting.

Providing health care plans for employees is a great thing.  It seems to me that what we need to do is find a way to decrease the costs and I’m uncertain how this plan would accomplish that goal.    At the onset, it appears to force health care premiums on most small businesses at the very level the premiums are at today.