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Oops, Now the Unions Tell Us They Don’t Like ObamaCare

Medicals costs are going up.  Who would have thought it!?

Imagine.  ObamaCare is forcing up costs.  And the unions are upset!

That is, the unions which worked so hard to pass ObamaCare.  It seems someone finally noticed that mandating benefits and imposing regulations has a tendency to … increase costs.  Increases which workers are stuck paying.  Who would have imagined such a result?  It’s not like anyone warned them, right??

Reports the Wall Street Journal:

Labor unions enthusiastically backed the Obama administration’s health-care overhaul when it was up for debate. Now that the law is rolling out, some are turning sour.

Union leaders say many of the law’s requirements will drive up the costs for their health-care plans and make unionized workers less competitive. Among other things, the law eliminates the caps on medical benefits and prescription drugs used as cost-containment measures in many health-care plans. It also allows children to stay on their parents’ plans until they turn 26.

To offset that, the nation’s largest labor groups want their lower-paid members to be able to get federal insurance subsidies while remaining on their plans. In the law, these subsidies were designed only for low-income workers without employer coverage as a way to help them buy private insurance.

In early talks, the Obama administration dismissed the idea of applying the subsidies to people in union-sponsored plans, according to officials from the trade group, the National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans, that represents these insurance plans.

It’s nice that economic reality sometimes intrudes in the world of organized labor.

Well, only partially.  Naturally, the unions’ solution is more government subsidies.  Obviously the fact that Americans already face $222 trillion in unfunded federal liabilities is of no consequence.  Just open Washington’s spigots a little more and all will be well.

Sigh …

View all comments (5) |

irish19| 1.31.13 @ 9:23AM

Schadenfreude, sweet sweet schadenfreude.
And a big fat "We told you so."
It couldn't happen to a nicer bunch. Maybe, just maybe now they'll start to wake up. I only hope it's not too late.

JD| 1.31.13 @ 12:32PM

You don't get it. The unions and the Democrats will unite behind the claim that ObamaCare needs to go FARTHER, handing out all the additional subsidies that this article mentions. They'll tell the world that it was a mistake to initially "compromise" so much.

The result of the failure of ObamaCare will be a move further left, not right. Until we do something about the Left's incredible dishonesty, we're in trouble.

Dimitry_Aleksandrovich| 1.31.13 @ 2:41PM

There's only two solutions to healthcare in the United States and Obamacare is not it. One is you either completely nationalize/socialize American healthcare or you break the monopoly of the AMA and the insurance companies so health care companies can compete lowering prices.

CopyKatnj| 1.31.13 @ 7:35PM

I thought many unions were exempt as are 2000 other companies along with all of Nevada. And Nebraska I'm not sure of exemption but they got the only independent tuition lending bank in America.

Sixgun| 2.1.13 @ 12:30PM

These rumblings are pre-planned and are the first step in claiming that Obamacare didn't go far enough. Costs are still too high, lets go back and amend the law to a single-payer system so we can get those costs down, which was their goal all along. What they really want is a national health care system ran by the government.

More Blog Posts by Doug Bandow

http://spectator.org/blog/2013/01/31/oops-now-the-unions-tell-us-th

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