Louisville, KY (March 10, 2015) – Small business owners met today at Greater Louisville Inc. to air concerns about the impact of the health insurance tax, or HIT, on local businesses and their employees. The HIT is an often-overlooked tax in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) that significantly drives up health insurance costs for millions of small businesses. The event was hosted by Greater Louisville Inc. (GLI, the Louisville Chamber of Commerce) and the Stop the HIT Coalition, a broad based group representing the nation’s small business owners, their employees and the self-employed.
“Small businesses are under huge pressure from the healthcare system, and the health insurance tax is just one more thing they don’t need,” said Chuck Fischesser, VP of KMA Insurance, Louisville.
The HIT amounts to almost $160 billion in new costs over the next decade, which is almost entirely passed on to small businesses and the self-employed who purchase coverage in the fully insured marketplace. The tax raises the cost of health insurance premiums for families by approximately $500 a year, according to an analysis by former CBO Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin.
Mike Kaelin, a small business owner from Louisville, offered his thoughts: “I would throw the health insurance tax…out and start over.”
Kentucky is home to more than 341,000 small businesses, which employ more than 689,000 workers. According to research by the National Federation of Independent Business Research Foundation, the HIT will jeopardize between 152,000 to 286,000 private-sector jobs across the U.S. by 2023, and reduce real GDP by as much as $20 billion to $33 billion over the same period.
Bipartisan legislation known as the Jobs and Premium Protection Act has been introduced in the U.S. Senate (S. 183) and U.S. House of Representatives (H.R. 928) to repeal the HIT.