When Steve Corman opened Vena’s Fizz House in the Old Port last year, he didn’t give health insurance much thought.
He was too worried about growing the mock cocktail bar that he and his wife, Johanna, had launched.
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“I was concerned this time last year that our business wasn’t going to survive the winter. Between family and business, we were busy 24 hours per day,” said Corman, who attended a forum Thursday at the Holiday Inn by the Bay in Portland about how to navigate Affordable Care Act insurance geared toward small businesses.
Businesses have from Nov. 15 through Feb. 15 to enroll in 2015 health insurance through the federal marketplace created by the Affordable Care Act. The Maine Health Access Foundation hosted Thursday’s forum so that small-business owners could learn about their options.
Vena’s business outlook has improved, and now that the Cormans are looking to hire their first full-time employee, they wanted to learn what options were available.
“The employee we want to hire, I told her we would offer her benefits, that we would take care of her,” Corman said. “But we’ve got to get the ball rolling.”
Individuals and families could purchase insurance through the ACA starting last year, but the Obama administration delayed implementation of the law’s small-business component until 2015 because of the glitch-filled launch of healthcare.gov.
The ACA does not mandate that businesses with fewer than 50 employees offer insurance to workers. As an incentive, however, the law provides tax credits for those small businesses with the equivalent of fewer than 25 full-time employees.
It’s hard to say exactly how many Maine businesses could qualify for those tax credits, but certainly a large majority would. According to one legislative report, as many as 80 percent of Maine businesses have fewer than 10 employees.
Roger Prince, a senior manager at BerryDunn accountants who spoke at the forum, said the tax credits could return up to 50 percent of insurance premium costs to small-business owners who qualify.
“It’s cutting your insurance costs in half,” Prince said. “That’s a pretty big deal to a small-business owner.”
Employers offering insurance for the first time would be adding a new expense but may be able to attract a better workforce at a relatively reasonable cost, Prince said.
Mitchell Stein, an independent health policy analyst who also was a speaker at the forum, said the tax credits can represent between about $10,000 and $30,000 in savings for small-business owners who have been offering insurance, and that helps with razor-thin profit margins.
Stein said there are many variables that determine how lucrative the tax credits can be, including the wages that employees earn and how many are on the payroll. He recommended that business owners see a tax expert or accountant to figure out what best fits their business.
Camp Ketcha in Scarborough has eight full-time employees, and Executive Director Tom Doherty was curious to see what options the federal marketplace offered the nonprofit.
“Health insurance makes my head hurt,” Doherty said. “These are always tough decisions that affect everyone who works for us.”
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