The Great Awakening-In God We Trust
More Obamacare Waivers
Shhh: HHS grants more Obamacare waivers, considers new 2012-2013 scheme
Back in September and October, when I first started hammering the Obamacare waiver issue, I commented:
Old promise: Everyone gets to keep their health insurance.
New promise: You can keep your health insurance…if you BEG hard enough for an Obamacare waiver.
Will only high-powered, politically connected corporations and Big Labor groups be spared? Where’s the transparency in how these decisions are being made?
To the first question, all signs have pointed to yes in the ensuing seven months.
To the second question, as usual, transparency is AWOL.
On Friday night, HHS quietly released another round of waiver information — picked up by The Hill. 128 new lucky winners will join 1,000 others in being exempted from the onerous, costly, private insurance-killing mandates that the rest of America is forced to follow.
Michelle Malkin has the rest Here
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Then House Minority Leader (now Speaker) John Boehner appears with a copy of the Democrats’ version of the health care bill
(CNSNews.com) – After labor unions, health insurance companies are the largest beneficiaries of waivers to the health care overhaul law, when measured by the number of workers affected, according to the most recent numbers released by the Department of Health and Human Services.
As of March 4, the number of health care waivers granted to various companies, unions and non-profit organizations stood at 1,040, up from 222 in December. A total of 2,624,720 people are covered by the 1,040 waivers.
The waivers fall into seven categories. Two are for union plans, with 237 “multi-employer plans” and 23 “non-Taft Hartley union plans.” Combined, these two categories cover 1,193,394 workers. The waivers included chapters of the Service Employees International Union, the United Food and Commercial Workers, and the International Teamsters.
The number of employees covered by all the non-union categories combined is 1,431,326.
But out of 29 companies getting waivers in the category of “health insurance issuers” – including companies such as Cigna and Aetna – 831,473 employees are covered.
The single entity with the largest number of employees covered is the United Federation of Teachers’ health care plan, which covers 351,000 people. The UFT is the union representing New York City school teachers. Health insurers Cigna and Aetna follow with health plan enrollees of 265,000 and 209,000 respectively.
Cigna CEO David M. Cordani said last November that he opposed the repeal of Obamacare.
“I don’t think it’s in our society’s best interest to expend energy in repealing the law,” Cordani said at the Reuters Health Summit. “Our country expended over a year of sweat equity around the formation of it.”
Apart from unions and insurance companies, a total of 599,853 workers are exempt from the health care rules. They fall under 423 “self-insured employers,” 322 “health reimbursement arrangements,” four “state-mandated policies” and two “association plans.”
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, widely known as Obamacare, eliminates annual caps – limits on how much an insurance plan will pay in benefits for an enrollee in any given year – by 2014.
Under Department of Health and Human Services regulations, annual limits can be no less than $750,000 for 2011, no less than $1.25 million in 2012, and no less than $2 million in 2013, before total phase out in 2014.
The HHS waivers, however, allow health insurance plans to continue to cap how much they will spend on a policy holder’s medical coverage for a given year.
House Republicans have led investigations in the Energy and Commerce Committee and the Oversight and Government Reform Committee into whether the waivers may have been issued because of political favoritism, specifically pointing to unions that benefited. Republicans have also argued that the need for waivers indicates the law does not work.
Read More Here
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