It’s hard to keep up with what’s happening with healthcare reform these days. The new law is complicated. The debate is heated. And entrepreneurs are busy running their businesses, making it hard to stay on top of it all.

We’re here to shine some light on the situation.

The fact is that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act—signed into law on March 23, 2010—has a lot to offer small business owners. There are tax credits available now—as in today!—for more than 4 million small business owners who offer their employees health insurance. Self-employed people who couldn’t get insurance because of preexisting conditions can now get coverage. And by 2014, the act calls for states to create health insurance marketplaces that will allow small business owners to combine their buying power and drive down the cost of health insurance.

Entrepreneurs across the country already are cashing in on the benefits. In Ann Arbor, Michigan, tax credits gave Mark Hodesh the confidence he needed to hire another employee for his Downtown Home and Garden shop. In Las Vegas, those credits mean Ron Nelsen, owner of Pioneer Overhead Door, doesn’t have to worry about having to cut his hard working employees’ health insurance. And in Illinois, the credits mean publisher Sharon Whalen no longer worries about having to drop the disability plans she offers employees of the Illinois Times when times are tight.

Also, let’s remember that small businesses were facing a dire situation if nothing was done to reform the nation’s broken healthcare system. An economic analysis we released, based on modeling by MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, concluded that without reform, small employers would shell out $2.4 trillion to cover healthcare costs by 2018, and 178,000 small business jobs and $52.1 billion in profits would evaporate.

That thought is enough to make anyone hoping for economic recovery feel sick.

While some continue playing politics in hopes of obfuscating the facts about healthcare, we want to make sure small business owners know what is in the Affordable Care Act for them. That’s why next Monday is national “Small Business Day,” and we are working with partners across the nation to hold a slew of events to get the word out about the panoply of benefits available to small businesses and the overall impact the act is having on our country’s job creators.

Get a full rundown of events and find some you can participate in by clicking here http://smallbusinessmajority.org/affordable-care-act-anniversary/1-year/.