Excerpt:
The list is at 729 — plus 4 states (Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, and Tennesse).
Among the many new union refugees are 4 new SEIU locals :
-SEIU Health and Welfare fund, 2000 with 161 enrollees
-Service Employees 32BJ North Health Benefit Fund* representing 7,020 enrollees
-SEIU Local 300, Civil Service Forum Employees Welfare Fund representing 2,000 enrollees
-SEIU Health & Welfare Fund representing 1,620
This is in addition to the three other previous SEIU waiver winners: Local 25 SEIU in Chicago with 31,000 enrollees; Local 1199 SEIU Greater New York Benefit Fund with 4,544 enrollees; and SEIU Local 1 Cleveland Welfare Fund with 520 enrollees.
Michelle pulled out a HUGE list of union-linked organizations that got waivers from Obamacare.
Michelle found the story in this post, which explains why the waivers are being granted.
Excerpt:
Last year, the HHS website was very efficient posting a list of ObamaCare waivers that had been granted. Ususally by the 3rd of the month the list was updated to included waivers that had been approved in the previous month. But something happened in January. Two weeks into the month no new waivers had been posted.
I was curious what caused the delay so I made some calls. Last Tuesday I spoke by phone with a media relations employees of HHS. She was not allowed to speak on the record, but after checking with folks at OCIIO who handle the ObamaCare waivers, she was able to inform me in a “not for attribution” way that the latest batch of waivers had in fact been processed. There was no specific hold-up that she could identify, they were simply running behind in getting the information on the website.
Well today, the day after the President’s State of the Union, the new waivers are up.
[…]This ever-expanding list of waivers is the direct result of ObamaCare raising the annual benefit caps on certain health plans. Obviously, a plan with higher annual limits is potentially more costly than one without them. The money to cover the difference in premiums has to come from somewhere. Without the waivers, it will come from the employer who are forced by law to upgrade to the more expensive plan. In other words, the 729 organizations who have received waivers are not seeking refuge from an unintended consequence, but from the costs associated with one of ObamaCare’s features. The real question is what these businesses will do once the waiver program comes to an end.
Obamacare raises the cost of health care! But only for YOU – not for Obama and his cronies.
WINTERY KNIGHT 