Open AccessPRIORITIZATION OF SMALL BUSINESS ENTERPRISE OWNER CONCERNS ABOUT THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT USING THE ANALYTIC HIERARCHY PROCESS
Author(s) -
Rakesh Gupta,
Christos Makrigeorgis
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
international journal of the analytic hierarchy process
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.213
H-Index - 3
ISSN - 1936-6744
DOI - 10.13033/ijahp.v8i1.365
Subject(s) - analytic hierarchy process , ranking (information retrieval) , sample (material) , pairwise comparison , prioritization , business , quality (philosophy) , hierarchy , medicaid , health insurance , actuarial science , marketing , health care , economics , operations research , computer science , law , process management , economic growth , engineering , political science , epistemology , chromatography , machine learning , artificial intelligence , philosophy , chemistry
For almost a century, Americans lacked a comprehensive health care system. Upon the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010, politicians, media, and lobbyists provided conflicting and confusing interpretations of the law. With such varied opinions, small business enterprise (SBE) owners became concerned about the potential adverse financial effects of the ACA. In this paper, we researched the problem by applying the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to create a ranking of the concerns of the SBE owners toward the ACA. A sample of 50 SBE owners representing 5 specific industry groups in Richmond, Virginia, was used to obtain a cross-sectional view of the concerns which allowed us to ascertain their uniformity or variability across these industry groups. The AHP sample data set was obtained via a pairwise comparison questionnaire. The AHP analysis revealed that the topmost SBE owners concerns were insurance premium, quality of care, and tax burden. In addition, these concerns were non-uniformly ranked among the industry groups. However, the highest and lowest concerns in each industry group were the same across the industry groups.