ObamaCare would raise costs for small businesses. How can you tell? Paul Bedard explains for Washington Examiner readers.

Despite the administration’s controversial decision to delay forcing companies to join Obamacare for a year, three-quarters of small businesses are still making plans to duck the costly law by firing workers, reducing hours of full-time staff, or shift many to part-time, according to a sobering survey released by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

“Small businesses expect the requirement to negatively impact their employees. Twenty-seven percent say they will cut hours to reduce full time employees, 24 percent will reduce hiring, and 23 percent plan to replace full time employees with part-time workers to avoid triggering the mandate,” said the Chamber business survey provided to Secrets.

Under Obamacare, just 30 hours — not the nationally recognized 40 hours — is considered full-time. Companies with 50 full-time workers or more are required to provide health care, or pay a fine. …

… Dealing with Obamacare is the biggest worry of small businesses and comes as they continue to see a sluggish economy which has already put a brake on their hiring. Just 17 percent reported adding employees in the past two years. And only one-in-five small business owners believe that they will add employees in the next two years.

The Chamber added that “nearly one-in-four employers say the health care bill is their biggest obstacle to hiring more employees.”

Here’s another instance in which policymakers could benefit from reviewing Henry Hazlitt’s one lesson about economics:

The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.

Had the Obama administration and the Democratic Congress of 2010 kept that lesson in mind, perhaps they could have avoided adopting a policy generating this type of negative impact for small-business employees.