Once the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) goes into effect, business owners who employ more than 50 workers will be required to make employee benefits available to their personnel, ensuring that it's not only of great quality but affordable as well. Business owners who have fewer than 50 employees, meanwhile, don't have the same mandate.
However, were they to be larger and if the ACA did not come to pass, more than half of small business owners say that wouldn't make benefits available due the belief that their workers couldn't afford it.
According to a recent survey conducted by professional development organization LIMRA, 53 percent of small business owners indicated that they did not extend health coverage to their staff, assuming that the company and those who are employed by it couldn't pay the price of premiums.
"With the cost of benefits – in particular healthcare – rising steadily over the past two decades, it is not surprising that many small business owners have made the decision not to offer employee benefits," said Kimberly Landry. "What our study found was that few small businesses considered making voluntary benefits available to their employees, which provide employees the ability to obtain the coverage they need at little to no cost to the business."
She added that while the current economic environment may be too cost-prohibitive for some companies to make benefits available, they still ought to research what premiums are, as most say they are at the very least interested in offering them at some point in the future.
Even if small business owners aren't required to offer health benefits to their workers, they are still required to make employees aware of the marketplaces that will be established in states, giving them another avenue through which to purchase coverage.
