Thursday, January 31, 2013
A hit already???!!!
According to Wall Street Journal via Yahoo News, the Teamsters, AFL-CIO, United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, and Unite Here are all complaining to Obama that PPACA is causing insurance costs to skyrocket. That's a "hit" on prediction number six.
Gee, it turns out that when insurance liabilities are uncapped and "children" aged 18-26 are added to parents' insurance plans and benefits covered are increased, insurance becomes more costly, not less. Whoda thunk?
Now the unions fear that both union-sponsored and employer-sponsored plans are in jeopardy, and that without taxpayer subsidy or some other solution will become extremely expensive, and perhaps unsustainable.
From the WSJ article:
John Wilhelm, chairman of Unite Here Health, the insurance plan for 260,000 union workers at places including hotels, casinos and airports, recalls standing next to Barack Obama at a rally in Nevada when he was a 2008 presidential candidate.
"'I heard him say, 'If you like your health plan, you can keep it,' " Mr. Wilhelm recalled. Mr. Wilhelm said he expects the administration will craft a solution so that employer health-care plans won't be hurt. "If I'm wrong, and the president does not intend to keep his word, I would have severe second thoughts about the law."
If unions don't win the subsidy argument, they say that companies with unionized workers would become less competitive, especially compared with rivals too small to face the law's new requirements.
To which we at Unforeseen Contingencies can only respond "ha ha ha ha ha, told ya so."
Update 4 February: Walter Russell Mead provides further corroboration on the coming headslam citizens can expect on insurance prices. I suppose it is not nice of me, but I find this mess mildly amusing... too much time spent arguing with ACA advocates, I guess.
