Business owners need to consider their options as federal health care reform affecting health insurance exchanges begins October 1. 

Here are seven things all business owners should know:

1. Self-employed workers may lose current coverage. Certain organizations that provide health insurance policies to sole proprietors and self-employed, such as the Entertainment Group Insurance Trust (TEIGIT), are notifying members that their coverage will be discontinued. 

2. Bare-bones coverage will disappear. Many small-business owners now buy insurance policies for themselves that only provide limited or “catastrophic” coverage. Under health care reform, however, policies will have to encompass more and include preventative services—meaning many business owners with bare-bone policies will have to get better coverage and likely pay higher premiums.

3. Small-group plans could get cheaper. Thanks to the pooling effect of the public exchanges, premiums for some small employers could actually fall next year, according to The Wall Street Journal.

4. Choices for small businesses on the exchange could be limited. In some states such as Washington, North Carolina and New Hampshire, few insurers have signed up to provide policies for small groups.

5. Tax credits for small businesses get better. Businesses with 25 full-time equivalent employees will get a tax credit valued at up to 50 percent of their health insurance premium costs in 2014, up from 35 percent this year.

6. Provision to let employees shop for coverage is delayed. The Obama administration announced that part of its Small Business Health Options Program (“SHOP”) has been delayed until 2015. Small businesses will have to wait until then to allow employees to select between multiple plans; until then, they will have to offer employees just one plan.

7. People with pre-existing conditions will get relief. Having a chronic illness or other serious condition once meant health insurance was cost prohibitive—or even not available—to small-business owners. Health care reform bans insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions and many will be able to find policies on the exchanges. On the other hand, however, that could mean higher premiums for healthier people, according to an interview by BusinessWeek.