Small
Business Thanks McConnell, Guthrie for Supporting
The Kentucky office of the National Federation of Independent
Business today thanked Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and U.S. Rep.
Brett Guthrie for taking the lead on legislation sparing 160,000 small
businesses from an unnecessary rise in health-care premiums under the
Affordable Care Act. President Obama signed the legislation into law.
Guthrie
introduced H.R. 1624 in the House, and McConnell guided the Senate version of
the bill, S. 1099, through the Senate.
“This
legislation means a lot to Kentucky’s small businesses, because it protects
midsized employers from increased regulations and higher health-insurance
premiums,” said Tom Underwood, state director of NFIB/Kentucky, the
commonwealth’s leading small-business association.
“This was
commonsense legislation that’s going to make a big difference for a lot of
small businesses,” Underwood said.
Kevin
Kuhlman, NFIB’s director of federal public policy in Washington, D.C., also
commended President Obama for signing the measure into law.
“This is the
only stand-alone bipartisan bill so far attempting to fix part of the
healthcare law that the President has been willing to sign and he deserves to
be commended,” Kuhlman said.
Under the
Affordable Care Act, small businesses with between 51 and 100 employees were
due to be scooped into the small group insurance market starting in 2016.
The small group market is more heavily regulated than the market for larger
businesses and most actuaries expected rates for those firms to increase as a
result. The measure signed by the President, which passed both houses of
Congress this year with strong bipartisan support, calls off the mandatory
expansion of the small group market.
“The small
group market is more restrictive and expansion would have attracted businesses
with higher risk employees, so premiums would have increased everyone,” Kuhlman
said. “Many of the businesses that would have been forced into the market
would have lost the plans that they and their employees liked and they would
have been forced to pay more for their troubles.”
There is
bipartisan agreement in Congress that the ACA is flawed in other ways.
Numerous reforms have passed the House with Democratic support and several
important measures languishing in the Senate are supported nevertheless by
members on both sides. Until yesterday the President has been unwilling
to concede stand-alone changes to the law. His action, according to
Kuhlman, is a hopeful sign that more progress is possible.
“We hope this
becomes a trend,” he said. “The ACA has been a big disappointment to
small businesses and there are many ways to make it less burdensome.
Yesterday was a small victory but encouraging nonetheless.”
For more
information about NFIB, please visit www.nfib.com.
