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Heritage
Network
Morning
Bell: Will Unions Want to Repeal Obamacare?
By
Chris Jacobs
September
16, 2013
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be repealed.”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.
Read
this article and others at Heritage Network
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