Happy Anniversary, Now Kill It

This Thursday it will be 6 months since President Obama signed the new health care reform bill. What is taking so long for all the predicted devastation to happen?

Am I being too sarcastic? I don’t think so.

Just last night I watched Representative Joe “You Lie” Wilson (R-SC) on the evening news call for repealing the new health care law. Every Republican incumbent and challenger running for Congress is saying the same thing on the campaign trail.

Today’s piece in the New York Times tells how Republicans will either repeal or chip away at the new health care law depending on home many new seats in Congress they pick up in November.

So what does Rep. Wilson and the Republican Party want to repeal or kill that will affect small businesses?

--Tax credits are in effect right now for small businesses that offer health insurance to their employees. In South Carolina 53,000 small businesses (88% of all SC businesses) have fewer than 24 employees and thus qualify for the new federal tax credits for providing health insurance to employees. About 16,000 businesses in South Carolina have 10 or fewer employees with less than $25,000 annual average wages and are thus eligible for the full tax credit of 35% of premium paid by employer. Joe and the GOP say NO more tax credits.

--Insurance exchanges in every state will create very large pools of individuals and employees of small businesses where they will purchase insurance. These exchanges will reduce insurance premiums for small businesses by cutting the current 18% higher administrative costs small businesses now pay. In addition increased competition for this pool of business will also drive down insurance premiums. Joe and the GOP say NO. (Instead of exchanges, Joe and the GOP want to require small businesses to join Association Health Plans run by organizations like the NFIB--the pretender small business organization--in a far less and now obsolete effort to create insurance pools.)

--In the insurance exchanges small businesses will no longer have to pay higher premiums for all workers if they have an employee with a pre-existing condition. Joe and the GOP say NO.

These are just the great benefits small businesses will enjoy under the new health care law that Rep. Wilson and the stronger Congressional GOP want to eliminate.

But since the new law does not require businesses to offer insurance if they have 50 or fewer full-time employees (about 97% of all South Carolina’s businesses) and in our state 97% of the remaining businesses already offer health insurance to employees, where is the GOP evidence that repeal is a good thing.

My challenge to Rep. Wilson and anyone out there who supports repealing or a budgetary dismantling the new health care law is this.

Name me one small business that has been harmed by the new law today. Just one. Give me a name and number and I’ll contact them and publicize their plight.

I’m waiting.