Plumbing-Heating-Cooling Contractors — National Association Vice President Kevin Tindall, owner of Princeton, N.J.-based Tindall & Ranson Plumbing and Heating, was one of three small-business owners who testified on Capitol Hill April 17 about how the implementation of the nation’s Affordable Care Act is affecting small businesses. 

In both his written and oral testimony, Tindall referred to himself a “small-business job creator” but pointed out that “the continued rise in the cost of providing health-care insurance absolutely stifles my ability to create, provide and sustain jobs.” 

According to Tindall, many small businesses, including his own, do not qualify for the tax credit incentives provided by the ACA because the salaries they pay their employees often exceed the $50,000 per year threshold. He also said that small businesses simply cannot continue to absorb the steep insurance premium costs that continue to rise every year. At his own company, Tindall paid 9.7% more to renew health-care insurance in 2011, followed by an increase of 9.3% in 2012.

  “We’re not being able to predict the cost of going forward,” Tindall said. “The implementation of the law was supposed to create a cost-controlling mechanism, but as a company, I haven’t seen that yet.”           

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