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SOUTH BRUNSWICK: Small businesses react to healthcare decision

By Nicole Cosentino, Special Writer
   Affordability seems to be the key issue for local businesses in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last week to uphold “Obamacare.”
   ”If it is affordable, yes, it is good,” Anees Sheikh, owner of Dollar Planet on Route 27 in Kendall Park, said Monday. “But I don’t know how affordable it will be. (I may) have to let employees (go). It is a survival matter.”
   The high court upheld the entire Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2009, by a 5-4 vote June 28. The controversial law requires all citizens without insurance to purchase coverage by 2014 or pay a tax surcharge of $600 or 2 percent of the individual’s income, whichever is greater.
   Local business owners that would be impacted by the healthcare law appear confused as to what it truly entails and what additional costs may materialize. Many are still reeling from the recession and have had to cut back staffing levels already.
   The Dollar Planet currently employs two workers along with Mr. Sheikh, who said he has owned the store for 12 years. The economy has forced Mr. Sheikh to close another store location on Route 1 and to also increase his weekly working hours from 50 to 80.
   ”I don’t even have coverage,” Mr. Sheikh said. “You have to shrink yourself (in business).”
   Mr. Sheikh said the recession has already caused him to let some employees at the store go and to end a wholesale operation he conducted as a side business.
   Mohammad Mubashia, the owner of the Nawab Grill in Dayton, said the healthcare law would “raise (his) costs a lot.”
   The small ethnic deli has three employees, all of which are not covered by the business’s insurance, according to Mr. Mubashia.
   Despite the possibility of raising costs, Mr. Mubashia said he supports the law’s intent and the options it could provide the uninsured.
   ”I think everybody should have insurance,” Mr. Mubashia said. “It should be affordable”
   Mr. Mubashia said that one of his previous employers did not even offer coverage to workers and that he feels the workers should at least have an option to purchase coverage.
   ”(The law) will give us options to charge employees for coverage,” Mr. Mubashia said.
   Star Quality Dry Cleaner’s owner Yung Sohn is more optimistic about the law than Mr. Sheikh and Mr. Mubashia.
   ”We like it,” Mr. Sohn said. “The law will help small businesses like ours.”
   Mr. Sohn has owned the small business in Dayton for eight years.