In 2010, President Obama said small businesses would actually save money under the ACA, perhaps even as much as $3,000 annually. However, in late February, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal agency in charge of implementing most of the ACA, issued a report estimating that, thanks to Obamacare, two-thirds of the nation’s small businesses will see their costs increase. That translates into higher health insurance premiums for 11 million workers.

More proof that Obamacare could prove disastrous for small employers? In 2013, when the Chamber of Commerce and the International Franchise Association polled a cross-section of their members about how the ACA might impact their businesses, the results were foreboding: 58 percent reported that Obamacare's costs would negatively impact their businesses.

Although President Obama’s administration has delayed until 2015 one important aspect of the law; namely that employers will owe per-worker penalties if health insurance is not offered to employees, coverage for many employees is still required this year. If not, employers will be hit with an overall penalty.

Workers whose bosses delay offering medical insurance could have purchased coverage on the health care exchange. If they met income requirements, they could have qualified for subsidies. If, in 2015, employers begin offering health insurance, those same employees will have to reevaluate whether they still qualify for subsidies on the exchange.

However, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, most employers that will be required to offer health insurance under Obamacare already do. Their statistics indicate that 94 percent of companies with between 50 to 199 employees and 98 percent of those with 200 or more employees already offer medical benefits to their workers.

That doesn’t mean life is all rosy for employees. Some larger employers are modifying overall benefit offerings to offset the cost implications of the ACA by mandating high-deductible plans to workers. According to Paragas, this is being done to “soften the financial impact of more costly premiums for their employees.”

Another perhaps unforeseen cost of the ACA for employers is the outlay of additional funds as they calculate how to best abide by the law while still remaining a financially viable company. “All employers, large and small, are expending additional human resource capital to develop different approaches for providing coverage,” says Paragas.

---

Tami Kamin Meyer is an Ohio attorney and writer.