Newtek Business Services, The Small Business Authority, with a portfolio of over 100,000 business accounts, announced today the findings of its SB Authority Market Sentiment Survey, a monthly window into the concerns of independent business owners. Based on a poll of over 1,200 respondents, one of the key findings from the January survey is 65% of business owners have not yet decided upon a course of action to manage their healthcare costs over the next 12 months. Of the remaining, 13% plan to rebid their policy, 8% plan to reduce benefits to employees and 14% plan to ask employees to pay a greater share.

The full January 2013 results showed the following:

Barry Sloane , Chairman, President and CEO of The Small Business Authority commented, "We are surprised at the number of business owners who have elected to not make decisions as to how they will manage changes in healthcare plans. We recently advertised, on national cable news, a solution for business owners to discuss health and benefits. The results from that solicitation were less than anticipated. The response rate from our advertising and the data from this survey clearly tell us that small- and medium-sized business owners are delaying any response or reaction to Obamacare, despite the fact that it might not be in their best interest to be paralyzed at the moment."