Nearly 80 percent of Connecticut and southern Massachusetts business leaders say rising health care costs are a major concern for their company this year, a fresh survey says.
Health care costs in 2013 was the most often cited challenge or concern among Connecticut business leaders, according to First Niagara Bank’s second annual survey of executives in all six Connecticut counties and the southern Massachusetts counties of Hampden and Worcester.
About 12 percent of business leaders surveyed said health care costs were their No. 1 concern.
Meanwhile, 65 percent of the business executives surveyed said they favor a repeal of the federal Affordable Care Act, a sign that the sweeping federal health care reform law doesn’t have much support among the state’s business community.
The survey was conducted by New York’s Siena College Research Institute which interviewed 361 chief executive officers, chief financial officers and senior managers of private companies with $5 million to $200 million in annual sales in the service, manufacturing, retail, engineering/construction, wholesale and distribution, financial and food and beverage industries.
This year’s survey reports that 35 percent of these business leaders say they expect economic conditions to get better in their respective states in 2013, down from 41 percent who said that last year. Another 31 percent, up from 24 percent last year, expect these conditions to worsen while 34% of business leaders expect conditions to stay the same for 2013.
Results from the second annual First Niagara Survey of Southwestern New England Business Leaders are available at http://www.siena.edu/sri/southwesternbusinessleaders2013
