NYC Small Businesses Sick over ObamaCare

Small to mid-size businesses, which generate close to 70 percent of US jobs, fear ObamaCare could bury them in colossal bills and future paperwork, and are now paying the price as premiums have soared in anticipation of the new regulation.

Employers across the metro area have had to put off hiring workers. They blame spiraling health-care costs and the uncertain future price tag of ObamaCare.

“ObamaCare has been very negative for our business,” Moishe Heimowitz, principal at First Medcare, a 50-employee medical practice based in Canarsie, told The Post. “The high costs of ObamaCare and our present health-care costs have impeded our efforts to hire more people.”

Heimowitz says his company’s health insurance plans have skyrocketed in price. His outlay has jumped by 50 percent on average in the past 12 months—monthly increases of $200 for single employees, $350 per couples and a perplexing $1,000 for family plans.

As the statewide unemployment rate is stuck at 7.9 percent—and 8.6 percent in the five boroughs—these businesses have the means and desire to hire, but not the will because of the unknown costs and regulations.

This brouhaha is happening against a backdrop of 12 consecutive dismal weeks of initial jobless claims above the 400,000 mark.

It’s evidence, say the business experts, of a damaging local and national employment malaise.

Other costs associated with ObamaCare are pumping up costly new premiums, according to Michael Tanner, an expert at the Cato Institute who has extensively studied ObamaCare.

Cases in point: Children can now remain on their parents’ insurance plans until they’re 26, and lifetime caps are prohibited on insurance benefits.

The increases in premiums could also be the insurance companies loading up early, anticipating future restrictions on how much they charge because of ObamaCare, according to Tanner.

That’s even though President Obama once vowed that health-care reform would “bend the cost curve down.”

Heimowitz makes the ObamaCare cutoff with his 50 employees at First MedCare. But it doesn’t matter to him. “The thing is, if I don’t offer health insurance, I won’t attract good staff and professional staff,” he said, anxiously weighing his potential future liabilities.

Some will take the option of paying a fine of $2,000 per worker instead of insuring them. Analysts think many will do just that. Not surprisingly, a new McKinsey & Company study estimates that 78 million Americans will lose their current coverage. That defeats the ObamaCare’s goal of universal health-care coverage, analysts say.