By Holly Kozelsky
A great many of our friends, neighbors and acquaintances are about to face a major hardship: severe increases in health insurance, doubling or tripling their costs, or more if the federal government’s dispute over it does not get resolved.
These are the folks who work for a small business or on their own as an independent contractor. Over the past decades, health insurance premiums had gotten to be so outrageously high that unless you worked for a large company which offered health insurance, or were married to someone who did, you probably just could not afford it. If you had health insurance, it would easily cost the equivalent of a week or two week’s pay; if you didn’t, you and your family paid a daily gamble of whether or not one of you would have a medical emergency that would put you into bankruptcy and cause you to lose your house just to pay part of your medical bills – if you were lucky enough to get treatment.
The health insurance subsidies offered by the Affordable Care Act level the playing field between small businesses and large. Suddenly, thanks to those subsidies (they are also called enhanced premium tax credits), a person could work at a small business or for himself and still have the lowered insurance costs of someone who worked for a large company.
And you probably know darn well that when I say, “lowered insurance costs,” that’s a relative term. Even with a subsidy provided by the workplace or the ACA, health insurance costs $400 or $600 or $800 a month, or more, and it just keeps going up.
When you look at it that way, the ACA’s subsidies are just as important for small businesses as they are for the 22 million people who receive those subsidies.
According to the Washington Post’s “Who Will Lose Out When ACA Health Insurance Subsidies Expire?”, published on Oct. 4, the makeup of people who get ACA subsidies are people who work for small businesses, 27.4%; the self-employed or business owners, 18%; other workers, 27.4%; retired people, .4%; students, 6.4%; and other, 12.3%. The Washington Post attributes those statistics to KFF, an independent health policy research organization.
Think of the people who make up your life: your preacher and church staff, farmers, florists, funeral home operators, your hair stylist or barber, your real estate agent, your manicurist, our favorite newspaper editor and most of our reporters, even your doctor and dentist.
Think also of the folks who work in our local museums. Yes! I’m one of them. I came to this job from a steady corporate job with excellent benefits. I was very afraid to leave a job with the cushion of benefits to take a job that didn’t have any – other than the very best kind: a worthy mission, great people and a flexible work schedule, of course. But could I afford to pay sky-high modern insurance costs? It was unthinkable to go without: What if my daughter or I had a medical emergency?
It was the Affordable Care Act which tipped the scale for me. The subsidy allowed me to get family health care coverage (we are only two people, but I pay the same as if I had a dozen kids) for the same price as I would have gotten while working for a big company.
Suddenly, I stand to lose that ability to afford my and my daughter’s insurance. How many people could afford the gut punch of out-of-the-blue having to pay another $500 or $1,000 or even $1,500 a month?
I’ll tell ya who – not whether they could afford it, but that they are going to have to face it – your preacher and minister of music and church secretary, your favorite florist, the lady or man who fixes your hair, your grandma’s or mother’s CNA, the folks at your favorite local restaurant, and the list goes on and on.
Whether or not to extend the subsidies is at the heart of the government shutdown that has been going on since Oct. 1. If you are not following that in the news, it is worth looking up and following it. And as you read or see about it, think of your friends and neighbors this will affect – all the small businesses and cultural entities that make Martinsville and Henry County uniquely itself.
