One obvious sign that Obama-Care isn’t the affordable health care system that the American people were promised is that the federal government keeps having to give waivers to labor unions, businesses and other organizations because they cannot afford ObamaCare’s costly mandates.
The law – approved exclusively by Democrats in 2010 – forces employers to provide coverage of at least $750,000 this year to everyone in their health insurance plans. That is a huge expense to the many employers who had offered workers limited but affordable medical insurance plans. As a result, they are faced with the prospect of either sharply raising the premiums that their employees pay or dropping health coverage altogether.
Because the Obama administration does not want to face the political fallout of acknowledging that ObamaCare will raise premiums and may reduce health coverage, it has been handing out waivers to exempt certain organizations from the $750,000 coverage rule. Republicans suspect that the president’s political allies, such as labor unions, are unduly benefiting from the waivers, though the administration denies that.
But at any rate, more than 1,400 unions’ and businesses’ health plans have been exempted from ObamaCare’s coverage rules.
And now, the administration says it will allow applications for new or extended waivers for nearly three more months. How many more unions and companies will need waivers from ObamaCare to fend off its harmful effects on their health plans? Nobody knows. So far the waivers have exempted plans covering 3.2 million people.