Last I heard, they pay a tax. 8% of the salary IIRC, unless they've added a new amendment.

thank you for answering. Something I thought of....what if it's a small company and they couldn't afford to carry insurance before?

Tough S**t.


Translation: someone's going to get the big ugly axe.

sorta kinda what I was think Andrew but there are a lot of small business that simply can't afford what this new plan wants. so IMO they will

1. go belly up which includes people out of work
2. cut back on pay
3. hike up the cost of the product
4. lay offs

I don't see any of those scenarios helping the economy either. and if the business shuts down or the worker gets laid off...then what do they do about health insurance?

ummm I don't remember but I think there is a minimum size to the business

There are several plans in the works but to my knowledge all the plans in consideration, including those working their way through congress, have an exclusion to business's with payrolls smaller than 350,000. Still could include some companies that some might consider small (couple mill in sales) but I think for the most part those companies can probably find a way to afford it. It could create some difficulties though for a few of those on the bottom of that scale.

Even then, I think the average small business is still only like 5-7 employees or something as many (like 35-40% or something) are simply self-employed or independent contractors. I need to find those statistics.

IIRC, that provision was simply to protect the self-employed from paying the business fine for not providing care and the individual fine for not having care at the same time.

Just to clear this up, but I got to page 6xx or something before I said f**k it and don't recall reading about it, but hell, it's what 1500 pages by now i'm sure so I could be totally off base on this.

I found a comparison on the US.gov website a week ago, unfortunately I can't seem to get much of anything to work right now. Seems to be a big problem out there on the net. At any rate it showed the differences between the bill running through the house the senate and such. All had exclusions and I don't recall anything being as minimal as 5-7 employees but I could be mistaken.

Just logged on, have been business all day and its thirty six minutes till I start celebrating my seventy fifth birthday. But Dragoness Saying “Government did not intervene” is too much. I haven’t looked real good to see if anybody has called her on this. I know I’m taking four words out of text but “Government did not intervene”.

Happy Birthday to you.

We've been looking for that squirrel, btw.

No, the 5-7 was the ballpark that I think the average small business is. I don't remember the exact figure. Basically, if the line was at that, then half of all small businesses still had to pay the tax and even businesses with double that many employees still can be struggling. We have 7 plus the owner and barely keep our doors open. if the line was there, I imagine that exempts a large chunk of businesses and places an even larger burden on the rest to fork out the $$ to pay for this. I just cite it as an example to show how I think that even if there was a limit to size, I doubt it'd be more than a few employees or maybe $200k a year.

Hell, I know for a fact that my employer's payroll is over $350,000 a year and there's only 8 checks being written. According to the figure cited above, my boss would have to fork out the $$ if he didn't provide insurance (he currently does) and at what our current payroll is (and that the fine is still 8%), that's two tire changers worth of pay in a single tax to pay for some other guy's healthcare. Guess who's getting cut? I can say for sure I'll become the best paid ASE master certified tire changer in the business.


oh, and happy birthday james , and yes, we make sure to call her on everything lol.

thanks guys. that is kinda why I asked. I have worked as a book keeper for construction companies and other small business that had MAYBE 20 ish people there. I knew they barely made it so I was curious how this would effect those type of companies

Believe me I do understand what you are saying as I am an employer myself and had to cut my own insurance to keep my head up. Of course any more my payroll is now low enough I wouldn't be assessed. That I said, I did say before that it would be hard for some, though I don't necessarily think that is your employer who you've said is already paying for insurance. And with that few employees it's cheaper for him to keep the insurance than to pay the fine. Where I could see things getting hurt is some one who employs 15 or 20 minimum wage employees. He's the one not likely currently giving insurance and the cost to him to supply insurance would be a MUCH larger percentage. That is the real trouble spot for reform.

Davey....that is kinda why I asked the question. I have done books for small businesses before that barely keep their heads above water as it is.

The person that I was for 12 years owned his business during the last few years that I was with him. When he took over the business, the two employees had no health insurance. It really bothered us plus my SO needed insurance.

We got the employees covered. That really cut into our budget big-time but we felt that it was the right thing to do. We had to do it.

I have worked for similar places too. some simply couldn't work insurance in without cut backs (payroll or lay offs) or going out of business. even though I needed insurance....I needed a job more.

I was asking about this because of things like this

well it really depends... minimum wage employers are more than likely just to pay the fine I think.

Say there are two firms with 10 employees each: a firm of CPAs and a gardening service. The accountants average a $80,000 salary a year while the gardeners average $20,000.

In these cases, it is more beneficial to the accounting firm to provide insurance whereas it is likely more beneficial to the gardening firm to opt out. if there is an 8% of payroll fine, that would be $6,400 an employee per year for the accounting firm and only $1,600 or so for the gardening firm. There is no plan anywhere in the US I've heard of that costs that little so the gardening service owner can increase his bottom line by just paying the fine.


It's kind of ironic. The job that pays enough to afford coverage on its own is more likely to get employer-paid coverage whereas the minimum wage earner who cannot afford coverage is more likely to be on their own. This is why the plan sees it as a necessity to provide tax credits and the like beacause they know there will be those businesses that opt out and their workers are more likely to be poor.

I believe you're probably correct on every point. But there are missing pieces. The accounting firm employees probably have insurance already, so there's no change there. The farm works are not likely to be currently uninsured through their employers. However at minimum wage they are eligible for coverage from the government and probably receiving it. We are already footing that bill, nothing new there. The money from their employer is most likely to go toward those in middle jobs in small companies. They have no company provided insurance, not enough earnings to afford it on their own, but too much to receive government assistance.

The problem with all that is as has been pointed out there are some companies on the lower end of all this who will be driven out of business trying to pay the 8% tax.

True problem in all this is the cost of medical insurance and treatment. If the reform package does not address those issues then it will fail. We can't afford health care now for everyone, if we don't lower the cost we never will. It's all just a pyramid scheme with out addressing the skyrocketing cost.