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Thursday, November 28, 2013

It is probably better to not ask what Obama and unions just did in your mouth. Update!

With apologies to Ace on the "in your mouth" joke, it's still worth knowing that the Obama administration just gave the unions a hand job on Obamacare, and you're paying for it:
It's official: Union-managed multi-employer health insurance plans are getting a special exemption from an Affordable Care Act — also known as Obamacare — tax. To make up for the lost revenue, taxes are going up on other plans.
The rules change, first proposed by the White House earlier this month, was announced by the Health and Human Services Department on Monday evening. The change exempts “self-administered, self-insured group health plans” from the law's reinsurance fee.
The shift will raise the cost of the tax for those who do pay to $44 a year. It had previously been $42. In essence, the change is forcing those who don't get the exception to pay an extra $2 for those who do.
Obama officials say this isn't just a union hand job, since it applies to all self-insured health plans that don't use a third-party administrator. That, of course, doesn't fly because pretty much nobody but unions use that arrangement. Plans of that ilk exist primarily under the Taft-Hartley Act, which applies specifically to unions:
The phrase “self-administered, self-insured group health plans” would include multi-employer plans. These are also known as “Taft-Hartley plans” and are widely provided by organized labor groups to their members.
Heaven forbid that the unions pay their share of Barry's healthcare boondoggle.

Update: Just to clarify, the fee applies to each covered employee, so it adds up quickly.

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