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 …