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Union Leaders’ Epiphany Leaves Them Scrambling: Wait, Obamacare Is Going to Drive up Our Costs?

Jan. 31, 2013 10:18am Becket Adams

The WSJ Reports That Union Leaders Are Souring on Obamacare

Members of trade unions join Occupy Wall Street protesters as they rally in Foley Square, New York, Oct. 5, 2011. (Stan Honda/AFP/Getty Images)

Imagine the following scene:

A handful of union bosses crowd around an old card table, punching numbers into their calculators. They’ve been up all night. Someone puts on another pot of coffee and a few of the older bosses are starting to fall asleep. Those who are still alert and active scratch their heads and re-enter their calculations.

“Oh, my gosh!” one of them shouts, concluding the all-night exercise. “‘Obamacare’ is going to cost us!”

Yes, according to a recent report from the Wall Street Journal, union leaders (i.e. the same people who campaigned tirelessly in favor of universal healthcare) are trying to figure out a way to avoid paying for the costs associated with “Obamacare.”

From the WSJ:

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.

As financial reality sets in, and rather than figure out a way to pay for the bill they helped pass, unions are trying to see if Washington will bail them out.

“Top officers at the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the AFL-CIO and other large labor groups plan to keep pressing the Obama administration to expand the federal subsidies,” the WSJ notes, “warning that unionized employers may otherwise drop coverage.”

“A handful of unions say they already have examined whether it makes sense to shift workers off their current plans and onto private coverage subsidized by the government. But dropping insurance altogether would undermine a central point of joining a union, labor leaders say,” the report adds.

No, really, union heads are acting like no one warned them that costs would go up.

“We are going back to the administration to say that this is not acceptable,” said Ken Hall, general secretary-treasurer for the Teamsters.

“I heard him say, ‘If you like your health plan, you can keep it,’” said John Wilhelm, chairman of Unite Here Health, the insurance plan for 260,000 union workers. “If I’m wrong, and the president does not intend to keep his word, I would have severe second thoughts about the law.”

Why? Why? Why didn’t anyone tell these leaders about the costs associated with “Obamacare”?

“It seems someone finally noticed that mandating benefits and imposing regulations has a tendency to … increase costs,” Doug Bandow writes for the American Spectator. “Increases which workers are stuck paying. Who would have imagined such a result? It’s not like anyone warned them, right?”

Click here to read the WSJ’s full report.

Follow Becket Adams (@BecketAdams) on Twitter

Front page photo courtesy Getty Images. Carousel image courtesy of Shutterstock.com

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Comments (406)

DebateMe
Posted on January 31, 2013 at 11:31am
It’s a lot easier to be liberal when you don’t feel the costs of it personally. That’s why wealthy liberals are always preaching its merits. But when the costs of liberal ideals actually affect the lifestyle of wealthy liberals, they are quick to become indignant and questioning. The wealthy liberals of France that are currently fleeing the country’s 75% tax rate is a spectacular case-in-point.

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- redacted
  Posted on January 31, 2013 at 11:37am
  France? You don’t need to go that far…see California and New York.
  
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- DebateMe
  Posted on January 31, 2013 at 1:02pm
  @redacted
  I don’t disagree with you. I in fact, as a native Californian for 42 years, I moved from there expressly because of how crazily taxed they are there. They can’t tax themselves enough.
  
  The rich liberals that drive policy in that state do one of two things: Some pay the costs of living because paying those costs still doesn’t affect their lifestyle. Others avoid the costs – look at hollywood and how they pick just about anywhere other than CA to film things for the express purpose of avoiding taxes and fees. They are hypocrits.
  
  I pointed out France because what is going on there is a pretty major current event that only cozy liberals here in America are unaware of.
  
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- redacted
  Posted on January 31, 2013 at 2:28pm
  Yes, I have 2 brothers and their families taking advantage of Hollywood filming in Georgia. Recently they got cast in “Silver Linings Playbook” and Clint Eastwood’s “Trouble with the Curve” as extras. OTOH, I also have a sister who works in Hollywood, and is one of the low-info Obama voters. Arguing with her is like giving medicine to a dead guy. Pointless and a waste of time and meds.
  
  Report this comment
- DebateMe
  Posted on February 1, 2013 at 1:45pm
  @redacted
  Sorry about your sister. If she’s young she probably will come around. My take is that if you’re still an avid liberal after 35 you’re probably going to be one for life. But by 35, most people start coming around at least enough to ask, ‘so, just what exactly are all these deductions out of my paycheck?’ That’s the starting point to conservatism… you start to see that all the liberal ‘good will’ by taking your money and giving it to other people just doesn’t work. Most people, if they can get away with being lazy, they will.
  
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LakeHartwellSailor
Posted on January 31, 2013 at 11:30am
Be careful what you as for….you just might get it.

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blazer809
Posted on January 31, 2013 at 11:29am
wonder what happens when roughly 50 million Americans say NO to health control, gun control and food control?

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curly1973
Posted on January 31, 2013 at 11:29am
Ya about the same as my girlfriend bosses…..She is a nurse and all of her doctors that she works for are pissed about all the new laws!?!?!?!?!?! I said ” where were they when we needed them to step up to the plate”?????

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bankerpapaw
Posted on January 31, 2013 at 11:26am
Well, the union leaders backed the little emperor. The union leaders should have read what was in
Obamacare before it was passed. Oh wait! They are a bunch of thugs who don’t know how to read.

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IMCHRISTIAN
Posted on January 31, 2013 at 11:26am
They are still working for one insurance plan that is big government monopoly

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Matrix22
Posted on January 31, 2013 at 11:24am
Any second now the MSM is going to report this….aaannyyy second now…..come on……

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- moreteaplease
  Posted on January 31, 2013 at 2:28pm
  lol
  
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Truth and Justice
Posted on January 31, 2013 at 11:23am
Oh my God!!! No way!! I can’t believe it. Wait and see what happens when Obozo gives them a waiver!

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ComeAndTakeThis
Posted on January 31, 2013 at 11:23am
The useful idiots in the union have no one to blame, but themselves. O’Stalin care is here to stay.

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JonBoyFL
Posted on January 31, 2013 at 11:23am
Useful idiots

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carhouse
Posted on January 31, 2013 at 11:23am
The proverbial ” sheep to slaughter” hold out your necks union dueche’s
true meaning of useful IDIOTS

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txannie
Posted on January 31, 2013 at 11:20am
What was it pelosi said….”we must pass the bill so we can read what it says”….well, your chickens have come home to roost because most were too lazy to read what they were signing on for. Welcome to the second term of the obama dictatorship.

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BobW
Posted on January 31, 2013 at 11:19am
The Unions have been thrown under the bus and have no one to blame but themselves and they deserve it.
The shame is that the African Americans and Hispanics have been hoodwinked and need someone, anyone to wake them up to this fact!

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carhouse
Posted on January 31, 2013 at 11:17am
LLLLLLOOOOOOOOOVVVVVVVEEEEEE IT
the proverbial “sheep to slaughter” hold out your necks union dueches

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ohiojack
Posted on January 31, 2013 at 11:17am
Well the unions woke up and found out you are going to pay sooner or later, now the people who are staying on welfare and getting things free are going to be woke up and find out they are going to start paying one way or another, because Obama has broken this country and their are not enough taxpayers to foot the bill.

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TruthSeekingTexan
Posted on January 31, 2013 at 11:16am
That’s funny right there! I don’t care who you are! :)

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- txannie
  Posted on January 31, 2013 at 11:20am
  …and God bless the pypmy’s in New Guini….
  
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RealAmerican2
Posted on January 31, 2013 at 11:14am
Who did the union think was going to help pay for Obamacare? That’s the amazing thing about liberals. They act like everything is free, or it’s “just there”, but they don’t realize that NOTHING is free and NOTHING is “just there”. Someone has to pay for all of the social service programs that our *powers that be* set up. Because the union pushed for, and supported Obamacare, they must have thought they were exempt from having to help pay for it. That thought is about as ridiculous as Obamacare itself! EVERYBODY PAYS in one way or another!!! Now they want to try and figure out a way of wriggling out of their responsibility in paying for a government health plan they worked so hard to push on the rest of the country! If anyone’s got extra money to help pay for the cost of Obamacare, it’s the union! LET THEM PAY… for all of it!

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OneWithGodistheMajority
Posted on January 31, 2013 at 11:13am
http://Www.blockexchanges.com. Go there now. Fight Obamacare!

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truthnstuff
Posted on January 31, 2013 at 11:13am
I think this is more slight of hand. Watch for the unions to get an exemption, and allowed to set up their own exchanges. They will suck the money from their members on both ends. Pay in and pay again when served.

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- slr4528
  Posted on January 31, 2013 at 11:38am
  If the unions receive an exemption then business leaders and nonunion workers should organize one major protest across the country. An exemption like that can not get swept under the rug!
  
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Rillobymorning
Posted on January 31, 2013 at 11:13am
Be careful what you wish for, big boys.

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RinkyDink34
Posted on January 31, 2013 at 11:10am
y’all have to pass it to know what’s in it! Ho Ho Ho……. Merry Christmas……..Ho Ho Ho

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diverdan
Posted on January 31, 2013 at 11:09am
How could anyone have known that socialism doesn’t work.

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asybot12
Posted on January 31, 2013 at 11:09am
One sentence in the article left me absolutely in stitches:
Union leadership:
“Obamacare is going to make unions less competitive”

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sandrunner
Posted on January 31, 2013 at 11:06am
What happens when a screw…?…screw itself?

USELESS.

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Zonepuppy
Posted on January 31, 2013 at 11:04am
I belong to the UFCW, a grocery store union. As a part time worker (it’s all I can find in this recovery) my medical benefits, provided by the union, include a $300 deductible, 20% copay beyond that and a $25,000 cap on what the plan pays. Simply put, if I have a stroke, I will max out the plan and pay any costs beyond that $25,000 out of my own pocket. The UFCW applied for an exemption for its lousy plan and now has the audacity to complain that Walmart doesn’t offer health insurance. With this plan, neither does my beloved union. But I know they are looking out for their, er uh, my best interests.

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- truthnstuff
  Posted on January 31, 2013 at 11:16am
  I feel for you. The unions are destroying the economy and this country. The bosses are Marxists.
  
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- Silver Lining
  Posted on January 31, 2013 at 11:22am
  A family member also belongs to a grocery workers’ union. All I ever hear from her is how happy she is to have union “protection” with her healthcare…and that she “deserves” not to have to pay one red cent toward it, thanks to her precious contract. When we tried to point out the inherent problems with “that guy” care, she did not want to hear any of it, especially the part about how the small family-owned company for which she works could very well, when pushed to the wall, close their doors and walk away…or perhaps go into the wholesale business…leaving all of those “protected” retail union workers out in the cold. She still says (very defensively), “I still think I made the right choice.” Good luck with that.
  
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