Soaring healthcare costs killing small businesses

Starting a business should not mean gambling with your family’s health. Yet for millions of entrepreneurs, it increasingly does.Nearly 1 in 5 small-business owners and self-employed workers rely on the Affordable Care Act marketplaces for insurance. They just got the awful news that exchange plan premiums will likely jump 15% in 2027, the second consecutive year of double-digit increases. Those hikes could stop new businesses before they start, as would-be entrepreneurs conclude that it will be prohibitively expensive to leave their jobs and forgo employer-sponsored coverage.

Researchers have found that a $100 increase in monthly premiums for a benchmark ACA plan corresponds with an 18% decline in the rate at which workers enter self-employment.

Read more from the Washington Times.