It’s bad enough that the administration has granted another 204 ObamaCare waivers. But even worse is that nearly one in five went to employers in the district of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, House architect of the bill.
It was Pelosi who said Congress had to pass the Democrats’ health care overhaul so the country could find out what’s in it.
Seems that quite a few businesses in her backyard found out what is in it and decided they didn’t like it.
According to the Daily Caller, 204 waivers for a provision of ObamaCare were approved last month — bringing the total waiver count to 1,372. Out of that April number, 38 of the waivers “are for fancy eateries, hip nightclubs and decadent hotels in” the Democrat’s hard-left San Francisco district.
The waivers, which the administration began granting only months after the bill was passed and signed, let employers avoid terms of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that require health care insurance plans to carry at least $750,000 in benefits before being exhausted.
This requirement, found in the thousands of pages that make up the ObamaCare bill, is too costly for many businesses that can afford to provide health coverage only through less comprehensive plans.
The owner of Tru Spa, one of the San Francisco businesses granted a waiver, told the Daily Caller both ObamaCare and new local laws have “devastated” businesses in the region.
The employers that were granted waivers in Pelosi’s district include Boboquivari’s, a restaurant that, reports the Daily Caller, “advertises $59 porterhouse steaks, $39 filet mignons and $35 crab dinners.”
“Then, there’s Cafe des Amis, which describes its eating experience as ‘a timeless Parisian style brasserie,’ which is ‘located on one of San Francisco’s premier shopping and strolling boulevards.'”
Also among the 38 are the four-star hotel Campton Place and the self-proclaimed four-diamond Hotel Nikko.
While Pelosi’s constituents are being protected from her party’s health care wreckage, another Democratic constituency is being taken care of, as well.
A coalition of groups operating under the name wheresmywaiver.com says that “50.26% of waiver beneficiaries are unionized, despite union workers only making up 11.9% of the workforce.”
The Service Employees International Union, whose former President Andy Stern was one of the most frequent White House visitors before he was named to President Obama’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, has been well-represented on the waiver list.
So have the teacher unions.
Organized labor, of course, is a heavy donor to Democratic candidates and was among the groups that pressed hard for Congress and the president to ram ObamaCare through the legislature and into Americans’ lives.
If ObamaCare is so vital to our national well-being, why are these unions and employers in a heavily Democratic district seeking relief from the burdens it imposes?
And why would Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner, whose brilliant thought process led him to say “the bill and I are one,” ask for a waiver for his hometown of New York City?
WINTERY KNIGHT 