Despite what you may have heard from Republican critics of health care reform, the new law may actually be good for people who work for small businesses. I’ve written about this previously, but the view is bolstered by a study out today from the RAND Corporation, which used a microsimulation model to predict how employers will react to health care reform.

According to the study, funded in part by a contract from the U.S. Department of Labor, once the Affordable Care Act is fully implemented, 95% of American workers will have health insurance through their jobs, up from 85% today. This increase, say the authors, will be largely driven by more small businesses offering coverage. “Currently, only 60.4% of workers at businesses with 50 or fewer employees have an offer of coverage; the proportion is projected to increase to 85.9% after the reform,” asserts the study.

This is very noteworthy because businesses with fewer than 50 employees will be exempt from the employer mandate. These companies, in other words, won’t have to provide health benefits but they will anyway. One major reason: that pesky individual mandate.