Last Friday, I noted how new regulations stemming from the national health care law could force a majority of workers to change their health care plans — breaking President Obama’s pledge that he would allow Americans who liked their plans to keep them.
But digging deeper into the regulations, David Hogberg and Sean Higgins of Investors Business Daily find that Obama’s big labor allies were granted a special exemption that would sheild their plans from new requirements:
Unions that had a health plan under a collective bargaining agreement by March 23, 2010, can switch insurers as long as the collective bargaining deal is in effect and not forfeit the grandfathered exemptions from many ObamaCare provisions. But anyone else – large business, small business, individual – who switches carriers loses their grandfathered status.
The idea of “grandfathered” health care plans was introduced to protect already existing plans from needing to abide by new requirements. But by the time the final version passed, the concept was rendered effectively meaningless by subsequent provisions that added another layer of regulation.