Small Business Coalition Launches National Anti-Reform Effort

As the GOP prepares to vote on Rep. Paul Ryan’s plans for the dismantling of Medicare, other smaller (but growing) coalitions continue to oppose the Obama admin’s preparations for reform. A group of small business owners are stoking the flames of the insurance mandate in the context of the role of small business — once reform creates a mandatory offering with the punitive tax assessment as the alternative.

The Stop the Health Insurance Tax Coalition (Stop the HIT Coalition) is working to repeal the costly, unfair and hidden health insurance tax on small businesses that begins in 2014. We will generate grassroots support for repeal by educating policymakers and activating small-business owners, their employees and the self-employed who are directly impacted by the pending HIT.

I smell the beginning of a trend in grassroots (astro-turf?) politicization of reform in the run-up to election ’12. With Obama’s warchest growing in leaps and bounds amid the GOPs still shapeless ’12 field, some anti-reform advocates either cannot wait for the political tides to turn regarding the reform law, or they could really be doing something radical — trying to shape that field of contenders.