Word has gone out that the Obama administration has decided, formally, to deny various labor unions’ requests to give special waivers to their health care plans. Basically, the plans in question were negotiated between labor and management, and have significant differences from ‘standard’ employee health care plans; the administration will refuse to treat said plans as being eligible for subsidies under Obamacare. This means that the plans will almost certainly get tossed by employers in preference to exchange-based plans, thus depriving Big Labor of both a personal revenue stream AND one of the best arguments for joining a union in the first place. Shorter version: Barack Obama has just done more damage to the American labor movement than most of the people reading this could ever hope to do.
Why? It’s pretty simple:
If he gives into their central request—expanding subsidies to apply to special union plans—the law will cost a lot more (as much as $187 billion, some calculate). Adding that much to the ACA’s bill probably isn’t the wisest thing to do when overall public support is already in free fall.
There’s simply no margin left. And Barack Obama’s never worked a day in his adult life, so what does he care?
Moe Lane
PS: My sympathy is real, but incredibly tenuous: I have enough to worry about how Obamacare might personally hurt my family to spare much for how it’s going to hurt families that I don’t actually know.
After all, what’s Big Labor going to do? Support Republicans?
OK, can everyone take a look around at their feet? I had a scrap of pity somewhere around here and seem to have misplaced it.
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(Sorry, Moe. I know your feelings on the union matter, but my family’s experience has been consistently negative with vermin like this. For example: My mom once had to threaten violence to get a union cretin to back off from her.)