Recently released Health and Human Services documents show that, far and away, union administered insurance funds are still the top recipients of Obamacare waivers, even after application rules were tightened in the summer in response to the first wave of waiver controversy. Early on unions were the biggest boosters of Obamacare, pushing relentlessly for employer mandates, even threatening to unseat any Democrat who dared vote against them. Public employee union plans (listed as “non-Taft Hartley” plans here) alone received waivers for 659,871 participants since June 2011 while multi-employer union plans received waivers that covered another 1.2 million workers in the private sector. To contrast, self-insured businesses received waivers that covered only 69,813 employees. Of greater significance, non-union health insurance providers were granted around 970,000 participants waived, less than half the number of participants waived than union plans. This suggests union plans were more cash-strapped and/or more likely to violate Obamacare mandates than non-union plans. The numbers get even more curious when looking at waivers denied. Only 7% of insurance companies and 20% of self-insured employers denied on their first application received a waiver when reconsidered. Union plans, on the other hand, fared considerably better when their applications were reviewed; 50% of public employee union funds and 40% of private sector union plans received waivers on reconsideration by HHS.
