I run a small business in New England. Six full time employees all of whom are paid at the top of their trade. They are specialists in their craft, and we are known as a quality company who are experts in our field. We charge our customers appropriately. I offer good benefits, vacation time, 70% subsidy of health insurance and I am very understanding of the needs of my staff, including single parent issues, health issues and the different needs of different staff in general.

I believe every customer should have a product that they feel was worth paying our price. I work hard to get the recommendations I do. We help out charitable and church institutions and always donate items to auctions, craft fairs, etc. Compared to other businesses in our industry who care little for customers and staff, we should be the type of business the left regards as ideal.

So why is it that I am always worse off after any new regulations or laws hit my company?

My health insurance renewed in March. That meant I needed to make any changes in late January/early February . The insurance companies had to adjust their plans at least a year ago, so this automatically puts the lie to the flexibility proposed now by the current administration. Keep in mind that I could forego offering health insurance entirely, but that's not the type of company we are.

To keep what was more or less the same policy with the same company, my own rates were going up more than 40%. To be fair, one employee would not have changed much, and he likely would do better by eating a higher deductible and going for the individual mandate and the subsidy. Ultimately we had to abandon that plan. Too many of us were hit too hard.

Because we had more than three policy holders, we were allowed to have two different policies to choose from. I stayed with a standard co-pay type, with a higher deductible (almost double) and some more restrictions. This policy - worse than my policy of last year - cost an additional $170.00 per month. The other policy we settled for was a HSA type policy. Two levels of deductibles are borne by the employee until they reach the first limit, then a 10% deductible kicks in until they reach the second. One employee (married, about 45 years old) will be paying about the same as they did with the better policy they had last year, and the other, a younger single employee is paying about $30.00 more per month with considerably worse coverage.

I am waiting for my $2,500.00 per year savings. Holding my breath. Turning as blue as the state I live in.

Posted by: topmaker at 06:14 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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