Unions Collect A Health Care Payoff
Politics: Big Labor carved out a tax exemption for union members' health plans on Thursday, paving the way for passage of health care reform. Call it what it is: a bribe to cronies in an increasingly corrupt overhaul.
With Nebraska winning "free" coverage of its Medicare costs in the Senate version of the bill, and Louisiana getting a tax exemption of its own, what's one more bone to a favored political group on a bill Democrats are determined to pass no matter what?
That's what made it easy for labor leaders, following a sit-down with the White House, to carve out a special set-aside for union members' gold-plated health benefits acquired under collective bargaining agreements. Nobody gets more special treatment from Democrats than Big Labor.
So if the bill passes, unions pay nothing on their health care for years until they can negotiate new contracts, while the rest of us plutocrats shell out a 40% tax on plans worth $8,500 for individuals and now $24,000 for families. No wonder the public is liking this odious legislation less and less?
"This is a policy designed to benefit elites," said AFL-CIO boss Richard Trumka in a speech Monday, demanding his union exemption. And yes, it started as a plan to stick it to the rich, targeting benefits "like the ones that the executives at Goldman Sachs have, the $40,000 policies," as White House adviser David Axelrod says when he plays the class warfare card.
The whole concept blew up in unions' faces, however, when they realized as many as a quarter of their own members — about four million and their families — had such plans. But instead of working toward a fair system for all, they sought and got a set-aside.
They knew the 40% tax on the "evil" insurers was not really a tax on companies, but a cost that would be passed on to them. But instead of coming up with an economically viable plan for cutting health care costs and extending it to more people as they claimed to want, they opted to stick it to the public, carving out a special exemption for themselves.
This is nothing more than another a political payoff for the $400 million in campaign contributions unions have forked over to elect Democrats since 2006.
With a health care overhaul that will scarcely pay for itself, ordinary Americans will end up footing the bill for the union elites with "Cadillac" plans. Which calls into question what this "reform," coming in the middle of an economic crisis, is really about. In other words, has it been a plan to bail out unions all along?
A year ago, unions' top priority was card-check legislation designed to increase their membership. But in April, Big Labor shifted its focus to health care. One union leader after another stopped in at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. to discuss the issue.
Anna Burger, president of the Change to Win confederation, a rival to AFL-CIO, visited 32 times; Service Employees International Union boss Andy Stern darkened White House doors 28 times, and AFL-CIO's Trumka scored eight meetings, all in an unusual display of influence.
For the SEIU, whose members include health care workers, the big benefit of the overhaul was that government-determined health care "exchanges" for insurance plans could easily mandate union-only hospitals and politicize the kind of care offered.
Unions also were keen for a public option, given how badly they'd mismanaged their members' pension funds. The United Auto Workers plan was Exhibit A. Unions wanted an overhaul so they could take expensive liabilities off their hands.
Now there's the tax exemption carve-out that amounts to yet another bailout for unions. In recent years, unions have won lavish health care plans for their members as a substitute for higher wages. They don't want those benefits cut and then have to answer to angry members.
This special exemption only papers over union mistakes while making the rest of us poorer. It is yet another example of the corruption that permeates this process and another reason to oppose the radical "reform" it has spawned.
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