The implementation of the Affordable Care Act has been a big headache for small-business owners, a PHCC member recently told Congress.

Kevin Tindall, owner of Tindall & Ranson Plumbing and Heating in Princeton, N.J., and vice president of the Plumbing-Heating-Cooling Contractors National Association, testified before the House Small Business Committee April 17. Calling himself a “small-business job creator,” he told members that “the continued rise in the cost of providing health care insurance absolutely stifles my ability to create, provide and sustain jobs.”

Tindall said his company does not qualify for many of the tax credits that the law provides because they pay many employees more than the $50,000 a year threshold.

He said the company’s health insurance premiums have increased more than 9 percent annually the last two years.

“I have yet to understand how we as a nation can continue to state that we need to create more jobs, yet challenge, threaten, or even ignore the very mechanisms for job creation,” 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. … The biggest problem I have is that it is unpredictable.”