Small businesses offered help in providing health care

About 150 Philadelphia-area small business owners, non-profits and entrepreneurs gathered today at Temple University to learn about tax credits currently available for health insurance.
Many of the health insurance provisions in President Obama’s health care law don’t kick in until 2014.

By Aaron Moselle

About 150 Philadelphia-area small business owners, non-profits and entrepreneurs gathered today at Temple University to learn about tax credits currently available for health insurance.

Many of the health insurance provisions in President Obama’s health care law don’t kick in until 2014.

But small businesses and non-profits can take advantage immediately of a 35 percent tax credit to help them shoulder costs in the meantime.

Under the law, businesses with 25 or fewer full-time employees are eligible if their workers on average make less than $50,000.

Linda Richardson is one of three staffers at a North Philadelphia Community Development Corporation. She says she’s encouraged, but worries about what insurance companies will do before the law takes full effect, “They were and are a powerful lobby and we are concerned in my non-profit about premiums going up between now and the final rollout, which means that many of the people who work in non-profits, women and younger people, are going to be just disproportionately affected until the final rollout.”

By 2014, states will have to set up Small Business Health Options Programs  or “SHOP Exchanges”  where companies can join together to buy health insurance at a lower cost.