Multi-employer plans, also called Taft-Hartley plans, are health insurance benefits typically arranged between a labor union in a particular industry, such as restaurants, and small employers in that industry.
About 20 million workers are covered by these plans; 800,000 of Joseph Hansen’s 1.3 million UFCW members are covered this way.
Taft-Hartley plans have been built over decades by working men and women but unlike plans offered on the ACA exchanges, unionized workers will not be eligible for subsidies, because workers with employer-sponsored coverage don’t qualify.
Obamacare’s regulatory changes to the small-group insurance market will drive up the cost of these plans.
For example, the rules requiring plans to cover adult children up to the age of 26, the elimination of limits on annual or lifetime coverage, and the mandates that plans cover a wide range of benefits will drive premiums upward.
But the key problem is that the Taft-Hartley plans already provide generous and costly coverage; small employers now have a more financially attractive alternative, which is to drop coverage and put people on the exchanges, once the existing collective bargaining agreements are up.
That gives workers less reason to join a union; a big part of why working people pay union dues is because unions play a big role in negotiating health benefits.
So the labor leaders are demanding that their workers with employer-sponsored coverage also gain eligibility for ACA subsidies.
Otherwise, their workers will be “relegated to second-class status” despite being “taxed to pay for those subsidies,” a result that will “make non-profit plans like ours unsustainable” and “destroy the very health and wellbeing of our members along with millions of other hardworking Americans.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/07/15/labor-leaders-obamacare-will-shatter-their-health-benefits-cause-nightmare-scenarios/
About 20 million workers are covered by these plans; 800,000 of Joseph Hansen’s 1.3 million UFCW members are covered this way.
Taft-Hartley plans have been built over decades by working men and women but unlike plans offered on the ACA exchanges, unionized workers will not be eligible for subsidies, because workers with employer-sponsored coverage don’t qualify.
Obamacare’s regulatory changes to the small-group insurance market will drive up the cost of these plans.
For example, the rules requiring plans to cover adult children up to the age of 26, the elimination of limits on annual or lifetime coverage, and the mandates that plans cover a wide range of benefits will drive premiums upward.
But the key problem is that the Taft-Hartley plans already provide generous and costly coverage; small employers now have a more financially attractive alternative, which is to drop coverage and put people on the exchanges, once the existing collective bargaining agreements are up.
That gives workers less reason to join a union; a big part of why working people pay union dues is because unions play a big role in negotiating health benefits.
So the labor leaders are demanding that their workers with employer-sponsored coverage also gain eligibility for ACA subsidies.
Otherwise, their workers will be “relegated to second-class status” despite being “taxed to pay for those subsidies,” a result that will “make non-profit plans like ours unsustainable” and “destroy the very health and wellbeing of our members along with millions of other hardworking Americans.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2013/07/15/labor-leaders-obamacare-will-shatter-their-health-benefits-cause-nightmare-scenarios/