Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us for today’s Senate Small Business Committee hearing to discuss the impact of the Affordable Care Act on America’s small businesses and employees.

I would like to thank Senator Jeanne Shaheen, our ranking member, and the other members of the committee, for their participation today.

Since its enactment in 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has forced small businesses to change the way they provide employer-sponsored health insurance coverage for their employees.

Currently, 60 percent of small employers do not offer health insurance to their employees, and much of that is due to the high cost of providing health insurance that must be purchased on the small group market.

Clearly, the Affordable Care Act has failed its namesake intention.

From rising premiums and increased health care costs to reduced access to doctors and hospitals, Obamacare just isn’t working for Americans.

That isn’t a partisan statement. The facts clearly demonstrate Obamacare’s failures.

Fact number one, premiums and deductibles have risen every year since the ACA passed in 2010. Premiums have gone up 24 percent and deductibles have gone up 67 percent. Wages, on the other hand, have only increased 10%.

Fact number two, Obamacare has increased premiums for the average American family.

We all recall when the President said he would sign a universal health care bill by the end of his first term that would cover every American and cut the cost of a typical family’s premium by $2,500 a year.

He was wrong, and between 2009 and 2015, the average family premiums for employer coverage have increased to $4,170.

This year is just a continuation of that trend, with average premiums for benchmark silver plans on the federal exchange rising by 7.5 percent this year, far surpassing inflation. For bronze plans, premiums increased an average of 12.7 percent this year from 2015, and the fear is that next year they will go up even more.

Fact number three, over four million people had their plans cancelled because those plans didn’t meet the new Obamacare requirements.

This is despite the President’s promise – 37 times over – that “if you like your health care plan, you can keep it.”

Fact number four, visits to emergency rooms have increased by 75 percent, which becomes enormously expensive for hospitals and taxpayers.

This utterly contradicts one of Obamacare’s biggest selling points that once everyone got health insurance coverage, they’d stop going to the Emergency Room.

Fact number four—and with all this, there are still 33 million people who are uninsured.

I could go on, but I’m sure we all have other obligations later today. My point is that Obamacare has failed its promises to the American people, and as a result, taxpayers bear the burden.

When it comes to Obamacare and small businesses, there were a number of provisions meant to encourage employer-sponsored health insurance coverage, particularly among small businesses. Unfortunately, it didn’t play out quite like the Obama Administration had expected.

Today, I want to focus on three Obamacare provisions that most directly relate to small businesses:

The employer mandate punishes large employers who do not offer adequate or affordable coverage if at least one of their employees enters an individual health insurance exchange and receives a premium credit.

These related penalties were scheduled to take effect in 2014, but considering the political implications, the Administration delayed implementation for businesses with 100 or more full time employees until 2015 and for businesses with 50 or more full time employees until 2016.

Last year, small employers who offered to pay their employee’s medical expenses directly through a health reimbursement arrangement were told by the IRS they couldn’t do that anymore, and if they did, they’d be penalized $100 per day per employee, up to $36,500 per year.

That $36,500 penalty is 18 times greater than the $2,000 penalty on a large employer that doesn’t provide any insurance at all for their employees.

That logic doesn’t make sense to me. Small businesses account for over 99% of employer firms in the United States, and we should be focused on helping them grow and create more jobs – instead of penalizing them out of business.

Another Obamacare failure is the Small Business Tax Credit. The ACA provides a small business tax credit to for-profit and nonprofit organizations with fewer than 25 full-time employees (FTEs), phasing out as firm size increases. The problem is that most small businesses aren’t signing up.

The Administration originally estimated 4 million small businesses would be eligible for the tax credit, but only 181,000 businesses were able to claim the credit in 2014, according to the Government Accountability Office.

Small businesses are also avoiding the Small Business Health Insurance Options Program and the SHOP exchanges, which were specifically designed to help small businesses utilize the risk-pooling mechanism of the newly established health insurance exchanges.

Despite the Small Business Tax Credit and the SHOP exchanges, small businesses simply cannot afford to provide health insurance for their employees.

Not only do small businesses pay approximately 18% more on average for health coverage than large companies, but they also receive fewer comprehensive benefits.

Part of the small business struggle is having limited options in health plans.

Big insurance companies are bailing out of the health insurance exchanges leaving individuals, especially people in rural areas, with only one or two choices in health plans.

This consolidation of health care providers is forcing out the small, independent physicians who are essential to a competitive health care market.

Then there are the taxes that have been imposed, like the Health Insurance Tax and the Cadillac Tax.

When you put all these problem areas together, it’s quite clear that Obamacare is failing American small businesses.

I’m hopeful that today’s discussion will shed some light on how folks are managing their businesses in the real world despite all of Obamacare’s impediments.