Sep 14, 2013 2 min read

In spite of what progressive elitists like The New York Times columnist Paul Krugman have to say, the early returns on Obamacare point to disaster.

As an owner of a small business in Washington County, I am currently faced with a health insurance dilemma for my employees. Our rates are projected to increase by 18 percent in 2014 if we lock in early and commit to UPMC by Sept. 30. If we wait, our rates are projected to increase by as much as 40 percent. What this means to me and others like me is to make a choice similar to those made recently by UPS and the University of Virginia and no longer offer health insurance coverage to spouses and children. That means they will need to go in to the exchanges or to private insurers to buy insurance.

My employees currently contribute 20 percent toward their insurance or roughly $140 per month for family coverage in a UPMC PPO plan. By all reasonable projections, that same insurance will cost them four times as much under the Affordable Care Act. Most of my employees will not qualify for subsidies under the act, so they will be taking expendable income that normally would be spent fueling the economy and putting it all in to health care. As a business, we can no longer afford the cost of health insurance for our employees, so where is the “affordable” part of all of this? When the president said you could keep your insurance if you like it, he failed to tell you about the extra $600 it was going to cost. The only people who may benefit from the Affordable Care Act are people who don’t work for whatever reason. For everyone who works, it is a complete disaster – except maybe for the federal workers exempted from it.

You give a lot of space to Paul Krugman and all he does is spew opinion and generalities. Why don’t we look at some real facts about how this nightmare is going to affect every worker in America.

Bill Wilson

Canonsburg