Misconceptions concerning federal law create unnecessary tension in the job market
The U.S. Affordable Care Act is surrounded by many myths and misconceptions. One of the most significant of these misconceptions is the idea that the federal law will lead many small businesses throughout the country to fire workers. This concept is tied to the health insurance mandates associated with the federal law. These mandates require businesses to provide health insurance benefits to full-time employees, but the law has its own designation for what qualifies as a full-time employee. The mandates of the Affordable Care Act have won the law the title of “job killer” by some, but that may be due to the fact that the law’s provisions are not well understood.
According to the federal law, all businesses with 50 or more full-time employees must provide health insurance benefits to their workers. Failure to do so beginning in 2015 will result in fines and other such consequences for those businesses. Critics of the Affordable Care Act suggest that this mandate will cause small businesses to shed jobs in order to avoid compliance, leading to a spike in the
unemployment rate among the populace. And often overlooked aspect of the Affordable Care Act shows, however, that many small businesses are likely to be completely exempt from this provision of the federal law.
Majority of small businesses exempt from health insurance mandate
Approximately only 3% of small businesses in the U.S. will be forced to comply with the health insurance mandate of the Affordable Care Act. That means only 200,000 businesses throughout the country will be required to offered appropriate benefits to full-time employees. These companies will not have to do so until 2015, at the earliest, giving them enough time to prepare for any financial impact that the health insurance mandate may have. The vast majority of small businesses in the country are exempt from the mandate and nearly all large companies throughout the country do not have any plans to change the way they offer health insurance benefits to employees.
The Affordable Care Act is often surrounded by controversy, but much of the turbulence and division that the federal law has caused may be due to the misconceptions people have of the law rather than the law’s actual provisions. There are some provisions of the law whose impact on health insurance premiums and hiring is not yet fully understood, of course. It will be impossible to gauge what effect these provisions will have on the country until they have been allowed to be enacted for some time.
