The Affordable Care Act's greatest hits keep
coming, and one that hasn't received enough attention is a looming
favor for President Obama's friends in Big Labor. Millions of Americans are losing their
plans and paying more for health care, and doctors are being forced out
of insurance networks, but a lucky few may soon get relief.
Earlier
this month the Administration suggested that it may grant a waiver for
some insurance plans from a tax that is supposed to capitalize a
reinsurance fund for ObamaCare.
The $25 billion cost of the fund, which is designed to pay out to the
insurers on the exchanges if their costs are higher than expected, is
socialized over every U.S. citizen with a private health plan. For 2014,
the fee per head is $63.
The unions hate this reinsurance transfer
because it takes from their members in the form of higher premiums and
gives to people on the exchanges. But then most consumers are hurt in
the same way, and the unions have little ground for complaint given that
ObamaCare would not have passed in 2010 without the fervent support of the AFL-CIO, the Teamsters and the rest.
The
unions ought to consider this tax a civic obligation in solidarity with
the (uninsured) working folk they claim to support. Instead, they've
spent most of the last year demanding that the White House give them
subsidies and carve-outs unavailable to anyone else.
But
don't expect ObamaCare favors unless you helped to re-elect the
President. In an aside in a Federal Register document filed this month,
the Administration previewed its forthcoming regulation: "We also intend
to propose in future rulemaking to exempt certain self-insured,
self-administered plans from the requirement to make reinsurance
contributions for the 2015 and 2016 benefit years."
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