UNIONS REPORT: The Irony of ObamaCare: Making Inequality Worse

[CaféAuLait]

The Irony of ObamaCare: Making Inequality Worse

The promise of Obamacare was the right one and the hope for extending healthcare coverage to the un-and under-insured a step in the right direction. Yet the unintended consequences will hit the average, hard-working American where it hurts: in the wallet. Currently a national dialogue is emerging by all political parties on the issue of income inequality. That is a debate worth having.The White House and Congressional Democrats are “resetting” the domestic agenda following the negative fallout from the rollout of the ACA. They plan to shift focus from health care to bread and butter issues of income inequality that have eroded the American paycheck for decades.


Ironically, the Administration’s own signature healthcare victory poses one of the most immediate challenges to redressing inequality. Yes, the Affordable Care Act will help many more Americans gain some health insurance coverage, a significant step forward for equality. At the same time, without smart fixes, the ACA threatens the middle class with higher premiums, loss of hours, and a shift to part-time work and less comprehensive
coverage.

Transferring A Trillion Dollars in Wealth: Most of the ACA’s $965 billion in subsidies will go
directly to commercial insurance companies, one of the largest transfers of public wealth
to private hands ever. Since the ACA passed, the average stock price of the big for-profit
health insurers doubled, their top executives were paid more than a half billion dollars in
cash and stock options, and in the past 2 years, the top 10 insurers have spent $25 billion
on mergers and acquisitions.

• Strangling Fair Competition: Before reform, different types of health plans were regulated under different bodies of law. The Obama Administration has blocked many non-profit health funds from competing for the law’s proposed trillion dollars in subsidies by
refusing to set fair regulations for different types of plans. The unbalanced playing field
will give employers of people covered by these plans powerful incentives to drop coverage.

• Moving to Part Time Work: The Administration’s experts say employers won’t follow the
incentives and drop coverage. But they also told the nation that employers would not cut
workers’ hours to get below the 30-hour per week threshold for “full time” work, even as
388 employers announced hours cuts since early 2012.

• Cutting People’s Pay: If employers follow the incentives in the law, they will push families
onto the exchanges to buy coverage. This will force low-wage service industry employees
to spend $2.00, $3.00 or even $5.00 an hour of their pay to buy similar coverage

Full report from Union here:


http://cdn.ralstonreports.com/sites/default/files/ObamaCaretoAFL_FINAL.pdf

Cover Letter Document

http://cdn.ralstonreports.com/sites/default/files/CoverLetterfor UH Leaders.docx

UNITE HERE is a labor union in the United States and Canada with more than 265,000 active members[1] The union's members work predominantly in the hotel, food service, laundry, warehouse, and casino gaming industries. The union was formed in 2004 by the merger of UNITE (formerly the Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees) and HERE (Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees International Union).Unite Here members by the Washington Monument, at the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and FreedomIn 2005, UNITE HERE withdrew from the AFL-CIO and joined the Change to Win Federation, along with several other unions, including the Teamsters, SEIU and the UFCW.

UNITE HERE - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Some rogue union reps or seeing Ocare with its faults finally?

 

[iamwhatiseem]

We all knew this was going to happen, the Republicans stated this a year ago. But of course they were called obstructionist for daring to question ACA.
Course the Republicans also said the employer mandate would have to be delayed - but they were called obstructionist for even bringing that up.
The Republicans also said that the individual fines would be obviously hard to collect and unfair - yep you guessed it - obstructionist.
These damn unions...obstructionist.

 

[dblack]

That's the core zeitgeist of corporatism - special interest politics. Everybody gets a different deal, depending on which class they belong to and how much political influence they can bring to bear. So much for equal protection.

 

[william the wie]

This raises the question of whether Obama is a deep cover operative of the GOP. Certainly he has done more for Republicans than any declared Republican.