Affordable Care Act Hasn't Earned Its Name

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Amy Brighton from Medina, Ohio, who opposes health care reform, rallies in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, Tuesday, March 27, 2012. (Photo: Charles Dharapak, AP)

The law has increased costs and added significant complexity to an already confusing system.Even the administration estimates the new tax rules will add over 40 million hours of paperwork.Fortunately, acceptance does not demand resignation. We can fight to change the law's most harmful provisions.

It was three years ago this weekend that President Obama signed a law that fundamentally changed our nation's healthcare system. While reform was needed, change is only good if it brings with it real reforms that reduce costs and empower individuals and small-business owners in making healthcare choices for themselves, their employees and their families. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) does neither of those things. Three years later, the law is not living up to its moniker.

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Report after report has established that the only changes that have materialized under the ACA are, in fact, the opposite of what small-business owners have been demanding for decades. The law has increased costs and added profound complexity to an already confusing system; higher taxes and thousands of pages of new regulations are having a tremendous impact on the small-business community and have contributed to the slow recovery of Main Street.

Leading, nonpartisan budget and tax authorities, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), have confirmed that the Obamacare will levy over a trillion dollars in taxes on an unsuspecting public. Families and small employers cannot afford this. Nor can they afford the 21 tax increases contained in the law—half of which will impact families and business owners earning less than $250,000 a year ($200k for individual filers). Not only does this violate the President's pledge to avoid tax hikes on low- and middle-income taxpayers, it breaks trust with a community of job creators — most of whom file as individuals.

Job creators will bear the biggest burden of one of these taxes, which is cleverly disguised as a "fee" in ACA jargon, will burden main street job creators the most.. According to the JCT, "a very large portion of the insurance industry fee [will] be passed forward to purchasers of insurance in the form of higher premiums." And "eliminating this fee could decrease the average family premium in 2016 by $350 to $400." Yet, this more than $100 billion tax on small businesses and families was somehow avoided by unions, which were exempt from the discriminatory Health Insurance Tax. Former CBO Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin has estimated that the average American family will see their healthcare premiums increase by approximately $500 per year because of the tax — no small sum for hard-working Americans.

Even the administration's own documents estimate that the Obamacare's new tax rules will add over 40 million hours of paperwork per year to individuals and job creators. And new regulations are still being written, which suggests that this estimate is low.

The laundry list of ACA problems continues with the employer mandate provision.

The employer mandate further separates both the employer and the employee from their healthcare choices. A series of regulations are spelling out the law's requirement that "applicable large" employers (which paradoxically are also required because of their size to purchase coverage in the small group market) provide a government-prescribed level of health care coverage to all full-time employees or potentially pay a hefty penalty.

Despite multiple attempts to fight it in the Congress and the courts, most people have accepted that the healthcare law is here to stay. So what is there to do? Fortunately, acceptance does not demand resignation, which is why members of the business community have been at the forefront of challenging the law's most harmful provisions. Repealing the small business Health Insurance Tax and the employer mandate, and taking a sensible approach to reducing the regulatory burdenson businesses and individuals is not part of a partisan agenda, but a practical one. Compliance costs for small firms are already 36% higher than for their larger counterparts. And the average American family is already over-taxed.

Anniversaries are generally good things, celebrated by looking back fondly on the time that has passed since a momentous occasion occurred. A retrospective in the three years since the passage of the ACA falls sadly short. In spite of a highly partisan political environment in Washington, the voice of reason has reached members of both parties and in both houses of Congress, several of whom have proposed legislation that targets the ACA's worst offenders that would make future Obamacare anniversaries a little less painful. We encourage other policymakers to join these efforts.

Dan Danner is the president and CEO of the National Federation of Independent Business. Bruce Josten is the executive vice president for government affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Matthew Shay is the president and CEO of the National Retail Federation.

In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes diverse opinions from outside writers, including our Board of Contributors.

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