Study: Small businesses dumping employee health insurance

a new survey just released today by gvsu shows since the Affordable Care Act was implemented more small businesses are deciding not to offer health insurance to their employees 25 news 8 tom hillen sat down with a professor who did the study and you learn more about the findings today right that's right Marlene oh this study focused on companies that have 50 or fewer employees because those companies are not mandated under Obamacare to offer their employees health insurance the survey found that of small businesses

that offered health insurance over the past two years only forty percent plan to offer insurance in 2015 and only twenty-eight percent plan to in 2016 small firms face have traditionally face higher costs and so they've been strapped for a while and that doesn't necessarily have anything to the ACA it just has to do with the fact that health care costs have been rising it's been particularly hard on the small firms in fact Muller says the survey suggests small businesses may be dropping their health insurance coverage because of the

availability of the public health exchange sixty-eight percent of small businesses that do not plan on offering insurance in 2015 are encouraging their employees to purchase health insurance on the public exchange I'm not saying that these escalating health care costs are due to the ACA we just don't know that we don't know what's gonna happen because it's going to take a couple years for the markets to play out and to even out she says some workers may end up better off on the exchange since individuals who earn up to four hundred

percent of the poverty level are eligible for federal subsidies which they wouldn't get if their employers offer them health insurance especially those people that have pre-existing conditions can now go out into this public exchange that the ACA put together and buy insurance and they are not discriminated against because of pre-existing conditions now that was not available before if you would like to read the entire survey we have that posted inside of her story right now online at woodtv.com Marley