HCR REPEAL IS A LOSE-LOSE FOR THE GOP

First of all, repeal will alienate one of their supposed core groups, small businesses:

Health-care changes are arriving - slowly
By Chelsea Conaboy and Tom Avril
Inquirer Staff Writers
Posted on Sun, Jan. 2, 2011

Ken Weinstein plans to offer health insurance to four more of his employees this year, three at a real estate business and one at the Trolley Car Diner in Mount Airy.

...a tax credit, beginning with the 2010 return, for small businesses that offer insurance to employees. The credit is available to businesses whose employees make less than $50,000 on average, and it is worth up to 35 percent of what the employer spends on insurance.

Weinstein said that he currently insured two employees - including himself - and that the tax credit would help him add four managers to the plan. He has 55 full- and part-time workers, mostly at the diner, and said he would have to raise menu prices to cover more of them.

"We need to offer small businesses like mine an incentive to insure more people," he said, adding that premiums had risen 15 to 20 percent a year. The legislation, he said, is "a move in the right direction."

Second, failure to repeal HCR will further alienate the Baggers.