Go figure, unions want Obama to tweak his Unaffordable Care Act yet once again. After touting how wonderful ObamaCare could be with a “few” minor tweaks, they had to admit that there are some problems for the lonely nonunionized workers. Read The Irony of ObamaCare at this link.
Obama did promise that employers would not cut workers’ hours, yet a year before the employer mandate was implemented close to 400 businesses announced plans to cut hours to less than 30 to say below the 50 worker, full-time threshold. Then the IRS arbitrarily defined “affordability” as only applying to employees causing UPS and other major employers to eliminate coverage for working spouses.
The unions are even willing to admit that ObamaCare, gave employers an incentive to pay a $2,000 fine per employee in 2015, rather than shell out somewhere between $8,000 to $12,000 per employee each year for insurance. And even acknowledged that employees pushed into the ObamaCare exchange will be spending between 4% to 25% of their income in an attempt to maintain equivalent coverage.
But, before you begin to believe that these big union types are genuinely concerned that you have lost or may lose wages, insurance, hours, or maybe even your job – think again! Unions are discovering, like the rest of us, that if you like your health insurance you probably can’t keep it.
Unions provide health benefits to employees through nonprofit Taft-Hartley” plans and Obama dared to block many of these nonprofit health funds from competing for the subsidies by refusing to set fair regulations for different types of plans, saddling union plans with the same regulatory burdens without any benefits.
During 2016-2017, the cumulative effect of unsubsidized mandates on Taft –Hartley plans (Union plans) will escalate the gap between the cost of benefits and the penalties, raising even more pressure to drop employees. Bless their hearts – without subsidies or the ability to tweak premium shares, and with the new mandates raising health costs, these plans face “fatal taxation” of 40% of the value of the plan.
And those greedy big 5 insurance companies – Wellpoint, United, Aetna, Cigna, and Humana – saw their stock almost double as soon as ObamaCare was signed into law, an increase almost twice as fast as the S&P’s 500 index of blue chip stock. And, adding insult to injury, most of that $965 billion in subsidies will end up in the hands of those same greedy insurance companies, what the unions like to call the “largest transfer of wealth from public to private hands in history.” They would much prefer a transfer of wealth from public to union hands.
United HERE who represents 300,000 workers in hotels, food service and gaming, many of which receive benefits through the Taft-Hartley funds is infuriated that if they are forced to follow ObamaCare incentives, incentives I might add that they helped push on the rest of us, they fear “strife” as employees will face pay cuts to keep good coverage and the Taft-Hartley funds will be destroyed.’
Someone break out the violin! No, I don’t hate unions but I do hate the fact they think they’re special and deserve a reprieve while the rest of the country has to suffer under ObamaCare, especially since they, along with those “greedy insurance companies” helped get it passed.
ObamaCare was never about making health care affordable for everyone. It was intended to bring about the Marxist dream — redistribution of wealth. Rich people, small business owners, and the middle class are being robbed, so that the money can be redistributed to poor people who normally vote for Democrats.
It was intended to wipe out the middle class and make them dependent on government. The IRS predicts that health insurance for a typical American family by 2016 will be $20,000 per year. People that make $40K, or $50K, or $60K can’t possibly hope to spend $20K on health insurance without becoming homeless.
As a bonus, ObamaCare was intended to kill every decent paying job in the economy, creating only crummy, crappy part-time jobs. Why? Just to make sure the middle class is trapped, with no way out. Just to make sure no one has the $20,000 per year to pay for health insurance, thereby guaranteeing they become wards of the state.
ObamaCare was intended to bankrupt small business. Their rates are being doubled, tripled and quadrupled by ObamaCare.
It was written to make the IRS all-powerful by adding thousands of new agents and granting them control over 15% of the U.S. economy. The IRS now has the right to snoop into every aspect of your life, to go into your bank accounts, to fine you, to frighten you, to intimidate you. And Obama and his socialist cabal have access to your deepest medical secrets.
ObamaCare is intended to unionize 15 million healthcare workers, producing a $15 billion windfall in new union dues. That money , of course, goes to fund Democratic candidates and socialist causes — thereby guaranteeing Obama’s friends never lose another election, and Obama’s policies keep ruining capitalism and bankrupting business owners long after he’s out of office.
