Anchor Rising: A Foreseeable Consequence for Health Insurance Consumers

December 2, 2010

A Foreseeable Consequence for Health Insurance Consumers

Justin Katz

Remember when those of us who opposed ObamaCare were insisting that the law would increase costs and result in fewer options and others, including members of the Service Employees International Union were getting downright violent in support of the law? We were right, and they were working to their own detriment:

Late last month, the Service Employees International Union informed dues-paying members of its behemoth 1199 affiliate in New York that it was dropping its health care coverage for children. That's right. A radical leftist union, not an evil Republican corporation, is abandoning the young ‘uns to cut costs.
More than 30,000 low-wage families will be affected, according to The Wall Street Journal. Who's to blame? SEIU 1199 benefits manager Mitra Behroozi singled out oppressive new state and federal regulations, including the much-ballyhooed Obamacare rule forcing insurers to cover dependents well into their 20s.

Megan McArdle layers on some context, but this response to a perfectly foreseeable consequence of legislation that the union itself was prominent in promoting does have relate interestingly to the exemptions and waivers that we keep hearing about.

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Here's the part the right won't tell you...

Home-care agencies that contribute to the union fund collect their revenue from the state’s Medicaid program. Over the past two years the state cut about $370 million in Medicaid reimbursements to home and community-based care programs, according to New York State Association of Health Care Providers Inc., a trade association that represents agencies that employ home attendants.
“In home care in general, whether in a union or a non-unionized workplace, they are dealing with the crisis of trying to do more and more with less and less, and cut on top of cut,” said Christine Johnston, president of the association.

But it's so much more interesting to blame it on Obama!

Posted by: Russ at December 2, 2010 2:47 PM

One form of the Left's lies is purporting to refute a statement using a factoid or news item that is completely irrelevant to that statement. Russ's comment here is an excellent example.

Medicaid is a Marxist perversion of an already unconstitutional overreach of government power. Nowhere in the Constitution or its amendments is the requirement that some citizens pay for goods or services consumed by others. In fact, quite the opposite is true.

Posted by: BobN at December 2, 2010 5:05 PM

Good luck with that one, Bob. Kick the sick and disabled when they're down.

For the record, that Marxist rag, the WSJ, thought the information relevant. I merely pointed that out. Wonder why Malkin didn't mention it?

Posted by: Russ at December 3, 2010 10:20 AM

What is irrelevant is Russ's claim that the state's cuts in Medicaid led to the problem. From McArdle's article it is clear that the fault lies with mismanagement by the union of its own employee benefit program.

Posted by: BobN at December 3, 2010 2:47 PM