A health insurance tax would cost Colorado 2,500 jobs within the decade, all in small businesses, and add up to $1 billion in lost sales, according to a study released Wednesday by the National Federation of Independent Business.
“The (Health Insurance Tax) is one of the many job-killing problems contained in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (popularly called Obamacare) signed into law last year that will add staggering new costs for the Colorado small business community,” NFIB/Colorado State Director Tony Gagliardi said.
Not so, says the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative, a coalition of more than 50 nonprofits with a stake in any reform.
“The net impact on small businesses isn’t what they estimate,” CCHO executive director Dede de Percin said Thursday. “To say (Obamacare) will impact small business hiring is disingenuous.”
Nationally, the rise in cost of employer-sponsored insurance stemming from HIT will cost 125,000 to 249,000 jobs in the private sector, 59 percent of them on small businesses, the NFIB survey found.
“It really is astounding to think that this one provision in the health-care law will target small business and result in jobs lost,” said Susan Eckerly NFIB senior vice president of federal public policy.
When the tax officially goes into effect in 2014, it will cost small-business owners, their employees and the self-employed $87 billion in the first 10 years and $208 billion in the following 10 years, the study found.
CCHI says even if an assessment were to be absorbed through the small business community… “You don’t see the jobs lost,” de Percin said.
Pointing to a similar assessment here via Cover Colorado, where most insurers have passed the cost to small businesses and individuals under 50, “there’s no indication that it’s caused small business to decrease hiring or caused job loss,” de Percin said.
