The Obamacare Waiver List Grows

Melissa Clouthier called attention to this from Ethel Fenig at the American Thinker:

In August, 2009, as he was extolling the virtues of his proposed Obamacare, President Barack Obama (D) famously promised "If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan." And if you're a union member you certainly can; if you're not, well...

The Health and Human Services site Helping Americans Keep the Coverage They Have and Promoting Transparency (sic) conveniently lists the 773 waivers approved to date. Scroll through the list; notice that most of the waivers, more than 650 went to unions exempting well over 2 million employees.

Hey, why not? They've got good plans. John Sexton explains why they're "waivering" (ba-dump bump):

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...organizations who have received waivers are not seeking refuge from an unintended consequence, but from the costs associated with one of ObamaCare’s features.

Obviously, it's not just unions that received waivers as there are many, many small businesses that have them, too. As Sexton also asks, "...what [will] these businesses...do once the waiver program comes to an end?"