No one’s suggesting that HR managers wake up every day saying, “I think I’ll refuse to hire someone today because of his name.” If there is a problem, it’s a lot more subtle and subconscious than that.

Consider: One Web site, BehindTheName.com, asked people their reactions to the names “John” and “Juan.” A large majority thought someone named John was “wholesome” while someone named Juan was “strange.” Remember, this was a site-unseen question, without meeting the person.

Then there’s the famous study by MIT and the University of Chicago. Researchers sent out 5,000 fake resumes, and it turned out that resumes with names such as Tyrone and Tamika were less likely to get calls from HR managers than did their Anglo-sounding counterparts — even when the  qualifications were almost identical.

Warning: If managers in your company encourage you to seek out applicants with “American-sounding” names because “that’s what customers want,” don’t do it. Several court cases have involved discrimination suits against companies that used customer preference as a reason for refusing to hire employees with foreign-sounding or common African-American names. In almost all the cases, the employers lost. The courts’ reasoning: An employer cannot adopt a customer’s bias as an excuse for discrimination.

Based on the results of a study, an MIT economist insists that Obama-style healthcare reform would give small and midsize businesses a big boost.

The economist, Jonathan Gruber, did the study for the Small Business Majority, a nonprofit healthcare advocacy group. The study was done against the backdrop of data indicating that small businesses in the United States at one time were major providers of health coverage: 67% offered coverage to employees in 1995, compared to 38% in 2008.

Here are the conclusions of the study — and apparent benefits for small businesses under healthcare reform:

• Reduced costs. Small businesses would pay less to provide health insurance to their employees.
• More jobs. The study concludes that if we stick with the current system, healthcare costs will cause a loss of  178,000 small-business jobs by 2018. Introducing reform would save about 120,000 of those jobs.
• Better wages. The study cites exploding healthcare costs as causing cuts in wages at small businesses. With reform bringing these costs down, more money would be left to pay wages.
• Better profits. Reform would bring down costs, thus increasing profits.
• Better applicants. Workers who feel tied to their jobs because they fear not finding comparable benefits would be freed up to change jobs. Small businesses providing health care would have a greater talent pool from which to choose employees.

The study assumes three components of a  reform package, with variations:

1. An obligation on some or all employers to contribute to employee coverage.
2. Penalty payments for those that don’t.
3. Tax credits for those that do.

Here’s the full study.