Teamsters, Other Unions Now Protest the Obamacare Nightmare They Helped Create (+video)
Photo Credit: WNDBy Drew Zahn. Some of America’s top labor unions – including the influential Teamsters – have suddenly realized Obamacare is bad deal, and they’re suffering some serious buyer’s remorse.
“In campaign after campaign we have put boots on the ground, gone door-to-door to get out the vote, run phone banks and raised money to secure [the Obamacare] vision,” wrote three leading labor unions in an open letter to Congressional Democrats last week. “Now this vision has come back to haunt us.”
The letter, signed by James Hoffa of the Teamsters, as well as the presidents of the UFCW and UNITE-HERE, demands Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., “fix” the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act – also known as “Obamacare” – before it “destroy[s] the very health and well-being of our members along with millions of other hardworking Americans.”
“When you and the president sought our support for the Affordable Care Act, you pledged that if we liked the health plans we have now, we could keep them. Sadly, that promise is under threat,” the unions wrote to Reid and Pelosi. “Unless you and the Obama Administration enact an equitable fix, the ACA will shatter not only our hard-earned health benefits, but destroy the foundation of the 40-hour work week that is the backbone of the American middle class.”
According to the letter, Obamacare is laced with “perverse incentives” that create “unintended consequences” and “nightmare scenarios.” Read more from this story HERE.
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‘Unintended consequences’ causing ‘nightmare scenarios’
By Avik Roy. The union leaders are concerned that Obamacare’s employer mandate incentivizes smaller companies to shift their workers to part-time status, because employers are not required to provide health coverage to part-time workers. “We have a problem,” they write, and “you need to fix it.”
“The unintended consequences of the ACA are severe,” they continue. “Perverse incentives are causing nightmare scenarios. First, the law creates an incentive for employers to keep employees’ work hours below 30 hours a week. Numerous employers have begun to cut workers’ hours to avoid this obligation, and many of them are doing so openly. The impact is two-fold: fewer hours means less pay while also losing our current health benefits.”
What surprises me about this is that union leaders are pretty strategic when it comes to employee benefits. It was obvious in 2009 that Obamacare’s employer mandate would incentivize this shift. Why didn’t labor unions fight it back then? Read more from this story HERE.
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Obamacare Delay Has Serious Implications
Avik Roy appeared before the Health Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee to testify on the White House’s one-year delay in implementing the employer mandate of the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. “Obamacare”), which requires firms to offer health coverage to their full-time workers:
