Salt Lake City, UT (April 7, 2015) – U.S. Representative Mia Love (R-Salt Lake City) joined local small business owners today to discuss how the health insurance tax, or HIT, is impacting their businesses and employees. The event was hosted by the Stop the HIT Coalition, a broad based group representing the nation’s small business owners, their employees and the self-employed.
Representative Love opened the meeting by saying, “I was the original co-sponsor to HR 928 to repeal the annual fee on the health insurance providers enacted by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. I have been told of the increasing costs on you and other small businesses and I believe that repealing the HIT will help you. I want to take your issues to the floor of the House.”
Candace Daly, NFIB Utah State Director, mentioned, “NIFB in Utah has 4,000 individual member business owners. Health care costs are escalating every year. Employers are not able to keep employees insured considering higher premium, high deductibles and higher copays.”
The HIT is an often-overlooked tax in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that will significantly raise health insurance costs for millions of small businesses. The tax amounts to $159 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.
Jeff Downward, owner of the Francois D College of Hair, Skin and Nails, shared information with Representative Love about his company’s health care cost, noting that, “Since 2010, my healthcare costs have increased nearly 15% annually.”
Natalie Parkin of the Utah Beauty Association added, “This is the first time in twenty-three years that I have not provided insurance for my employees. It is more beneficial for them to have me drop company coverage and send them to the health exchange.”
Representative Love said, “You are preaching to the choir. Please continue to provide me with more individual experiences because I plan on speaking on the floor of the House on your behalf.”
Utah is home to more than 252,000 small businesses, which employ more than 486,000 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.
Representative Love is a cosponsor of H.R. 928, a bipartisan bill in the U.S. House of Representatives that would repeal the HIT and permanently relieve small businesses of this burdensome tax.