In a typical Friday afternoon “news dump,” the Treasury Department announced it could not grant unions’ request for another special Obamacare break.
This time, unions had lobbied the Administration to let union-run, multi-employer plans receive taxpayer-funded insurance subsidies on the new exchanges. These subsidies would be in addition to the tax break that multi-employer plans, like health plans offered by all employers, already receive.
Union leaders wrote to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) in July asking for the Obamacare “fix,” stating that their progressive “vision has come back to haunt us”:
When you and the President sought our support for the Affordable Care Act (ACA), you pledged that if we liked the health plans we have now, we could keep them. Sadly, that promise is under threat. Right now, unless you and the Obama Administration enact an equitable fix, the ACA will shatter not only our hard-earned health benefits, but destroy the foundation of the 40 hour work week that is the backbone of the American middle class.
However, despite comments by Reid that unions would get another special break, the Administration actually found one part of the law it wants to uphold—after all the waivers, delays, and illegal modifications made to other parts of Obamacare.
The question for unions is, what will they do now? Terry O’Sullivan, President of the Laborers International Union of North America, said on Wednesday that his union wants Obamacare “fixed, fixed, fixed….But if the [law] isn’t fixed…then I believe it needs to be repealed.”
O’Sullivan got his answer two days later—the Administration claims the law can’t be fixed. So will his union now call for Obamacare’s repeal?
As the old saying goes, “Better late than never.” Here’s hoping the Laborers Union, and other unions—having finally discovered that Obamacare could cost them both their jobs and their health insurance—ask Congress to stop the law now.
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Quick Hits:
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