Obama administration throws unions a bone in form of ObamaCare tax break

The Obama administration is throwing unions a bone on ObamaCare in the form of “tax break.” But if union officials are smart, they’ll throw it back. NPR is reporting that the administration is offering unions some relief from one of the many problematic features of the health care law. The proposal is to terminate a...

The Obama administration is throwing unions a bone on ObamaCare in the form of “tax break.”

But if union officials are smart, they’ll throw it back.

NPR is reporting that the administration is offering unions some relief from one of the many problematic features of the health care law. The proposal is to terminate a special reinsurance tax two years early. The tax, which would have added to the cost of union-administered “Taft-Hartley” health insurance plans, was originally to run for three years, but now the administration only plans on collecting the tax for one year.

Union bosses have long had a love-hate relationship with the Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as ObamaCare. At first the law was welcomed as a step toward nationalized health care that unions have long wanted. Over the summer, however, union officials started noticing serious problems with the law. The reinsurance tax was only one of several. Union officials also were disappointed by the administration’s failure to give union health plans favorable tax treatment and subsidies. They realized the law’s employer mandate also penalizes employers for hiring full-time employees. At one point, union bosses started sounding positively conservative as they warned of “unintended consequences” and “perverse incentives.”

ObamaCare’s defenders argue that the health insurance program is “the law of the land” but the rollout of the Affordable Care Act has involved a lot of improvisation, with special arrangements made on employer mandates and coverage for congressional staff. This latest ad-lib for unions comes on top of the federal exchange website’s technological failures, which are likely to take months to repair, at a time when more people have lost insurance coverage than gained it.

Having registered their protests, which go well beyond the reinsurance tax, union officials could, if they have the nerve, declare this latest offering from the administration insufficient. Doing so would put some distance between themselves and what could prove to be the largest public policy fiasco since prohibition. If union bosses really believed in what they had been saying they would then go on to call for the health care law to be repealed.

But that would mean a serious breach between union bosses and their partisan allies, something that would take more nerve than most union officials have. They have already passed up one big opening that they could have used to rewrite the law and protect workers’ health insurance and jobs. The most likely union response will be ineffective griping timed to do the least amount of damage to ObamaCare’s writers. Partisanship is still more important to union bosses than looking out for workers.