Labor union frustration boils over with president on ObamaCare

Unions are frustrated the Obama administration hasn’t responded to their calls for changes to ObamaCare.

Labor has watched with growing annoyance as the White House has backed ObamaCare changes in response to concerns from business groups, religious organizations and even lawmakers and their staffs.

They say they don’t understand why their concerns so far have fallen of deaf ears.

“We are disappointed that the non-profit health plans offered by unions have not been given the same consideration as the Catholic Church, big business and Capitol Hill staffers,” Unite Here President D. Taylor told The Hill.

It's an issue that Obama may have to face when he speaks to the AFL-CIO convention a week after Labor Day.

Most unions backed ObamaCare’s passage, but labor argues provisions in the law could cut employee hours, unfairly tax their plans and force workers off their union health plans into the law’s potentially more costly insurance exchanges.

The key issue are union members who many up many of the roughly 20 million people who use non-profit multi-employer “Taft-Hartley” health plans.

Unions want the administration to change ObamaCare so that those plans are treated as qualified health plans that can earn tax subsidies. Under the administration's interpretation of the law, the multi-employer plans are not eligible for the subsidies.

Without those subsidies, employers may have the incentive to drop the plans and force orkers onto the insurance exchanges.

“The Democrats have completely given the store away to the for-profit industry,” Taylor said. “Without any question, we have a scenario set up that ObamaCare has turned all the money over to the for-profit plans and the non-profit plans will fade away.”